What better time of year for an EP of covers? None. Devotchka from Boulder, Colorado has just released Curse Your Little Heart and just in time…. How welcome these songs are: “I Cried like a Silly Boy” originally by Baldo Rex kicks things off; “Venus in Furs” by the Velvet Underground; Sinatra’s, “Somethin’ Stupid”, Siouxsie and the Banshees’ “The Last Beat of my Heart” are all perfectly nestled inside of the track list.
Five covers plus one, the title track, an original, make up this record. It all ends way too soon with the song “El Zopilote Mojado” named after the Mexican town and covers traditional, warm, night-time, swaying, fuzzy, vintage mariachi music from that area.
Devotchka. Think Eastern European gypsy music mixed with a making-out-in-the-car-during-a-spring-shower-and-steaming-up-the-windows, yearning indie sound – even though you’re told you’re both too old for that kind of thing. In other words, tuba and stand-up bass, a four-person string section, guitar, bass clarinet, accordion, drums…. all playing like the sound of rumbling, strong, gusto-building, spring thunder-storm one minute, and then, delicately, aching, sounding like handling a lock of your great grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand mother’s one thousand year old hair.
This band’s emotional effect flows out from the powerful music and borrowed lyrics like pouring a huge blender of strawberry milkshake onto one spot of your kitchen table. It heavily rolls out from that spot and onto the floor, it spreads around in a thrilling kind of delicious chaotic manner, one which is defined by an emotional rather than a timed pace.
Hopefully you have heard at least a few of these songs before – in their original form – but the way this band plays them, you get caught up in them again, like those cherry blossom petals getting caught up in the breeze, being swept down the street with glee and honest awe. Damn, this band is great!
The lead singer, Nick Urata’s voice is a perfect definition of sincerity: if the lyrics are sad, he is sad, and so you become. When he sings of, “saying something stupid, like I love you” someone newfound, you feel awkward and venerable but swooningly hopeful as well. His singing and this band’s music fit together like the hand you’re holding fits, walking around in the spring sun right now.
Curse your little heart is available in record stores, but only the good ones. They tour everywhere, and may in your town for a fantastic night. Until then, I hope their album will make this spring the best one to have happened to you in a long time. If you give it a chance it will.
