100 Lovers

Isn’t it funny how life is sometimes?  You learn something new, meet a person, or read a new author, or hear a new band and you love it right away, and you can’t imagine not knowing it anymore. It touches something deep inside, and you need no time to think about it, it becomes a part of you...

“100 Lovers” is a title of the new album released by “DeVotchKa”, a four-piece multi-instrumental and vocal ensemble, I discovered a few days ago. I am ashamed to say how many times I listened to this song (their “How it ends” should be playing right now) since then...

Based in Denver, Colorado, the quartet is made up of Nick Urata, who sings and plays theremin, guitar, bouzouki, piano, and trumpet; Tom Hagerman, who plays violin, accordion, and piano; Jeanie Schroder, who sings and plays sousaphone, double bass and flute; and Shawn King, who plays percussion and trumpet.

The musicians employ techniques and instruments from all over the world, which makes them sound exotic and painfully familiar at the same time. In their early years “DeVotchKa” (means “a girl” in Russian, by the way) used to take part in burlesque shows, and toured with fetish model Dita von Teese. Some of their songs do make me think of depressed clowns,  drunken acrobats and Bradbury’s dwarfs... “Cheerful, eclectic lunacy with a heart as big as the world”, as Spin defines it.

Sounds just right to me, I am looking forward to Monday to go out and buy all of their existing CDs :-) 

Beautiful Sunday evening to all.

Love,

AB