Deaglan
New Member
Grammy award nominated pioneers of gypsy folk revival return to Ireland for the first time since the release early last year of their debut on indie label ANTI “A Mad & Faithful Telling”.
Best known for their award winning soundtrack to 2006 independent film Little Miss Sunshine, the Denver quartet continue as a wonderful genre unto themselves, concocting a beautiful blend of Eastern European bohemia, American prairie rock, and myriad other folk traditions with unique and spell-binding results.
A Mad & Faithful Telling is the first release the group has put out on a label not their own. Between the four members, the band uses at least a dozen instruments on the album, incorporating elements of Mariachi, Bolero, Greek, Slavic, and many more diverse styles to produce the inimitable sound classifiable only as “DeVotchKa”.
POD presents
DEVOTCHKA
Monday August 10th
CrawDaddy – Harcourt St – Dublin 2.
Doors – 8pm
Tickets €16/20 available from Ticketmaster, City Discs, Sound Cellar and usual outlets. www.ticketmaster.ie
www.devotchka.net
www.myspace.com/devotchkamusic
BIOG:
On stage sit a sousaphone, accordion, piano, violin, a bouzouki, an upright bass, percussion, a trumpet, drums, and a theremin. A woman sets aside an upright bass to pick up a copper tuba adorned with glowing red lights. She left a traveling civil war recreationist band to find a home here.
The drummer stands up behind his kit and lifts a trumpet to his mouth. Raised by Lithuanian polka musicians, he skipped a treatment center in Mexico to right himself in the study of mariachi horns. Here he exorcises demons of a punk past, and dreams ahead to Mexico.
A slight, black-suited man stands beside an accordion waiting to be played. He cradles a violin called ‘Juan Pablo’ (which has graced songs on a Mercury Rev album called All is Dream). In too many cities after too many shows, this beautiful instrument sits unattended, as its owner starts drunken fights with friends and fans alike.
The grandchild of an arranged marriage between a Sicilian and Gypsy, the singer holds an electric guitar in one hand, and with the other draws invisible lines in the air with pinched fingers, manipulating a home-made theremin’s ghostly call. From busking to pay for an infested apartment above the Bucket o’ Suds on Chicago’s Cicero Street a decade ago, to crisscrossing America with three classically trained musicians, he has been developing and refining the sound of DeVotchKa.
As DeVotchKa, these four musicians have quietly become one of the most celebrated bands making music today. A disparate, yet articulate union of Eastern European, Southwestern, South American, and American roots music, both punk and folk. It is music unique enough, performed at virtuosic degree, and teeming with enough intangibles, to rightly be called ‘special.’
Behind four records (SuperMelodrama, 2000, Una Volta 2003, How it ends 2004, Curse Your Little Heart 2006), DeVotchKa began its touring life as a house band for a North American
touring Burlesque troupe. Since then, DeVotchKa has traversed the continent with a wide range of like-minded musical peers including Belle & Sebastian, M.Ward, Calexico, 16 Horsepower, Los Lobos, Jim White, and the Dresden Dolls.
The release of How it ends introduced the country to what a burgeoning national audience had been following for four years. A staggeringly good record from far out of left field, How it ends met with nearly universal acclaimed (see attached quotesheet), the exposure turned the band into a growing underground phenomenon. Nationwide sold out shows followed as the band continued to convert with their soaring and beautiful live road show.
The Curse Your Little Heart EP showcases the band’s versatility, reinterpreting tracks by the Velvet Underground, Frank Sinatra, Siousxie and the Banshees, and others, in addition to taking on one of their own older songs. Could the band itself even have predicted what would transpire of the Arcade Fire’s Win Butler’s suggestion to the band that they take on ‘Last Beat of My Heart?’ The end result is the center-piece of the EP, a grand and soaring take on the song; a testament to the band’s true unique ability to transform nearly anything via a sound only DeVotchKa can create, and perhaps a look at the epic nature of where the band’s own recordings may move in the future.
In 2005 DeVotchKa was approached by the award winning music video direction team of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris to score their first feature film- a movie at the time without a studio home. The film, Little Miss Sunshine, became a worldwide smash, winning several Academy Awards and a nomination for ‘Best Picture.’ The score- composed primarily of elements drawn from the record ‘How it ends’ -was shortlisted by major industry press for nominations in the best score and best song category. The soundtrack- comprised almost wholly of DeVotchKa songs was nominated for a Grammy Award.
Now, the band is au courant, poised to shine on with their Anti- Records debut A Mad and Faithful Telling. From the cinematic richness of "Transliterator" to the modern pop experiment of "The Clockwise Witness," to the soaring and wrenching "Undone," DeVotchKa have produced a career-defining record and the world is listening.
DeVotchKa is:
Nick Urata - vocals, theremin, guitars, piano, trumpet;
Tom Hagerman - violin, accordion, piano;
Shawn King - drums, percussion, trumpet;
Jeannie Schroder - sousaphone, upright bass, vocals
Best known for their award winning soundtrack to 2006 independent film Little Miss Sunshine, the Denver quartet continue as a wonderful genre unto themselves, concocting a beautiful blend of Eastern European bohemia, American prairie rock, and myriad other folk traditions with unique and spell-binding results.
A Mad & Faithful Telling is the first release the group has put out on a label not their own. Between the four members, the band uses at least a dozen instruments on the album, incorporating elements of Mariachi, Bolero, Greek, Slavic, and many more diverse styles to produce the inimitable sound classifiable only as “DeVotchKa”.
POD presents
DEVOTCHKA
Monday August 10th
CrawDaddy – Harcourt St – Dublin 2.
Doors – 8pm
Tickets €16/20 available from Ticketmaster, City Discs, Sound Cellar and usual outlets. www.ticketmaster.ie
www.devotchka.net
www.myspace.com/devotchkamusic
BIOG:
On stage sit a sousaphone, accordion, piano, violin, a bouzouki, an upright bass, percussion, a trumpet, drums, and a theremin. A woman sets aside an upright bass to pick up a copper tuba adorned with glowing red lights. She left a traveling civil war recreationist band to find a home here.
The drummer stands up behind his kit and lifts a trumpet to his mouth. Raised by Lithuanian polka musicians, he skipped a treatment center in Mexico to right himself in the study of mariachi horns. Here he exorcises demons of a punk past, and dreams ahead to Mexico.
A slight, black-suited man stands beside an accordion waiting to be played. He cradles a violin called ‘Juan Pablo’ (which has graced songs on a Mercury Rev album called All is Dream). In too many cities after too many shows, this beautiful instrument sits unattended, as its owner starts drunken fights with friends and fans alike.
The grandchild of an arranged marriage between a Sicilian and Gypsy, the singer holds an electric guitar in one hand, and with the other draws invisible lines in the air with pinched fingers, manipulating a home-made theremin’s ghostly call. From busking to pay for an infested apartment above the Bucket o’ Suds on Chicago’s Cicero Street a decade ago, to crisscrossing America with three classically trained musicians, he has been developing and refining the sound of DeVotchKa.
As DeVotchKa, these four musicians have quietly become one of the most celebrated bands making music today. A disparate, yet articulate union of Eastern European, Southwestern, South American, and American roots music, both punk and folk. It is music unique enough, performed at virtuosic degree, and teeming with enough intangibles, to rightly be called ‘special.’
Behind four records (SuperMelodrama, 2000, Una Volta 2003, How it ends 2004, Curse Your Little Heart 2006), DeVotchKa began its touring life as a house band for a North American
touring Burlesque troupe. Since then, DeVotchKa has traversed the continent with a wide range of like-minded musical peers including Belle & Sebastian, M.Ward, Calexico, 16 Horsepower, Los Lobos, Jim White, and the Dresden Dolls.
The release of How it ends introduced the country to what a burgeoning national audience had been following for four years. A staggeringly good record from far out of left field, How it ends met with nearly universal acclaimed (see attached quotesheet), the exposure turned the band into a growing underground phenomenon. Nationwide sold out shows followed as the band continued to convert with their soaring and beautiful live road show.
The Curse Your Little Heart EP showcases the band’s versatility, reinterpreting tracks by the Velvet Underground, Frank Sinatra, Siousxie and the Banshees, and others, in addition to taking on one of their own older songs. Could the band itself even have predicted what would transpire of the Arcade Fire’s Win Butler’s suggestion to the band that they take on ‘Last Beat of My Heart?’ The end result is the center-piece of the EP, a grand and soaring take on the song; a testament to the band’s true unique ability to transform nearly anything via a sound only DeVotchKa can create, and perhaps a look at the epic nature of where the band’s own recordings may move in the future.
In 2005 DeVotchKa was approached by the award winning music video direction team of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris to score their first feature film- a movie at the time without a studio home. The film, Little Miss Sunshine, became a worldwide smash, winning several Academy Awards and a nomination for ‘Best Picture.’ The score- composed primarily of elements drawn from the record ‘How it ends’ -was shortlisted by major industry press for nominations in the best score and best song category. The soundtrack- comprised almost wholly of DeVotchKa songs was nominated for a Grammy Award.
Now, the band is au courant, poised to shine on with their Anti- Records debut A Mad and Faithful Telling. From the cinematic richness of "Transliterator" to the modern pop experiment of "The Clockwise Witness," to the soaring and wrenching "Undone," DeVotchKa have produced a career-defining record and the world is listening.
DeVotchKa is:
Nick Urata - vocals, theremin, guitars, piano, trumpet;
Tom Hagerman - violin, accordion, piano;
Shawn King - drums, percussion, trumpet;
Jeannie Schroder - sousaphone, upright bass, vocals
