Saturday, May 3, 2008

Such A Lovely Thing




My dearest readers,

Last year my top six favourite albums were as follows; 'Random Spirit Lover', 'Strawberry Jam', 'In Rainbows', 'Mice Parade' (ST), 'Night Falls Over Kortedala' and 'How It Ends' by DeVotchka.

In the faithful words of Wikipedia, "DeVotchKa are a four piece multi-instrumental and vocal ensemble that fuses Romani, Greek, Slavic, Bolero, Mariachi (and many more styles) music with American punk and folk roots."

Oh how DeVotchka warm my cold heart! I bought 'How It Ends' last year on a particularly bleak day in July. It was a Friday afternoon and to perfectly compliment my mood it was sleeting. I was convinced my then crush had slept with a mysterious (and horrible) lady the previous night when i had made the unusual decision to stay in, be responsible and get some uni work finished. On that dismal afternoon 'How It Ends' brought me warmth, comfort and hope. For me this album is one of those coincidental pieces of art that somehow manages to perfectly reflect a particular time and phase in my life. It also helped me realise my inner belly dancer, but that my loves is a story for another time.


Based on my love of their last album i was naturally pretty excited to get hold of 'A Mad And Faithful Telling', DeVotchka's most recent creation. In fact dear readers, i was so excited i may have let out an embarrassing squeal at Landspeed when i saw it waiting on the shelf. I bought it home to help with cleaning my putrid room and thus far i've been wonderfully impressed, though i admit it's taken several listens.


Here are two of my favourite songs from last year's 'How it Ends'.


-This song would probably make it on my list of 'all time favourite songs'.

-This song has never failed to make me happy.


Here are two of my current favourites from this year's 'A Mad And Faithful Telling'.



-This track is worth listening to just to hear the melody progression at the 3.12 minute mark. It's beautiful.

-Phoah! Listen to this a few times through and hopefully you'll understand.




Much love,

Jaimie.


*I'm moving on from being a ladette! Now i'm just an overworked, stressed and ridiculously tired rehab worker. I've had an appalling week at work.

4 comments:

Julia said...

i must say, i think the instrumentation is exquisite, but this is a classic example of a band who would be so much better without vocals.

Anonymous said...

The question still remains, why have you done a write up on DeVotchKa when your picture is of Gogol Bordello? Huh?

You're not fooling anyone, missy!

Jaimie said...

Julia my love, considering our differing opinions of Thom Yorke's vocal styling, i think we should agree to disagree on this one too. Oh, and approximately half of both albums are non-vocal.

You know too much Lachlan, it makes me suspicious. DeVoctchKa are no where near as pretty or fun looking as Gogol Bordello, why did you have to draw attention to it? Now my post is ugly, even if it is slightly more accurate. What were you saying about successful journalism the other night?

Anonymous said...

I was talking about contorting the truth, not defamation of identity...

Besides, you chose a terrible picture of DeVotchKa. Try this one: http://www.oncefuture.com/cherrycoloured/devotchka.jpg

I thought the appeal of the double-bass(which looks like the cello) would be write up yer' alley!