Music: Gypsy postpunk with DeVotchKa
DeVotchKa, with its Eastern Europe-via-indie rock sound, is a group of unlikely populists. But the band is both timely and from a different era, surprising and familiar. It makes lively music for rainy days and imbues misery with hope and romanticism. It is what you feel like hearing at any given moment.
The Denver band has three self-released albums, the last of which, 2004's "How It Ends," gave the band enough recognition to land them on the "Little Miss Sunshine" soundtrack. "A Mad & Faithful Telling," its new record for midsized Anti-Records, is a graceful, passionate album that is both raucous and beautiful, and it's the band's best work so far.
"One of the rewards of not having a big label is [that] we have always put out whatever we wanted," lead singer Nick Urata wrote in an e-mail while touring Europe last month. "And if we tried to change right now after all this time, we would probably sound like crap."
"A Mad & Faithful Telling" is a statement of identity, a confirmation that "Little Miss Sunshine" didn't cloud DeVotchKa's vision. If anything, each part of the band's persona is magnified: "Undone" and "Along the Way" are madly romantic ballads, but laced with classical guitar flourishes and "Ring of Fire" horns, respectively.
Urata's ethnic background includes Sicilian and Gypsy roots, and he is proud of how this heritage has influenced his band's multicultural sound. When asked whether anyone ever thinks this sound is a gimmick, he bristled.
"I'm sure some do, yes. It sounds like you do," he said. "It was in my DNA. Very early on, there were occasions when older people from the Eastern Bloc would show up to see us. At the end they would hug me and kiss me with tears in their eyes. If we could touch them, then who cares if you think it's a gimmick?"
(Well, I don't, but when has e-mail ever accurately portrayed a devil's advocate position?)
It's easy to imagine why "Sunshine" directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris thought DeVotchKa would be perfect for their film about a family loving each other at all costs. The band trades in songs about adversity, usually in the name of love. (If there's any doubt, try "Queen of the Surface Streets," their masterpiece from 2003's "Una Volta," with its chorus of "I'll move these rocks for you, my love/I will tear them up out of the earth.")
Urata said he appreciates the wide audience "Little Miss Sunshine" gave the band, but couldn't have predicted what followed its release. "It's hard to gauge what's going on when you are in the middle of it," he said. "When 'Little Miss Sunshine' was made, there was no studio behind it. Films with no studio have a very uncertain future, so everyone involved just wanted to see it get released."
Two years later, DeVotchKa is a band with a devoted following, a Grammy nomination and a fantastic new record. E-mail might ruin some intentions, but it easily conveyed Urata's deserved satisfaction: "The Gypsies say that God owes you a living," he wrote, "so I live to sing about romance and life and God.
"And," he concluded, "I like to drink while I'm doing it."
We'll never know if Urata typed this sentiment with one hand while raising a glass with the other, but let's remember it that way.
To DeVotchKa.
