If the indie- & alt- prefixes can take in the world, than surely they can take in world music. DeVotchKa may hail from Denver, but their music derives from the east (of Europe) and south (of the border). However, they aren’t just another world music band supported by arts councils across America – they’re the indie-world act that did the soundtrack to the Oscar-winning Little Miss Sunshine. Their latest, 100 Lovers, stays in the framework that they’ve developed, perhaps a bit sadder, perhaps a bit more Latin than Slavic, but is still singular.
100 Lovers opens with the orchestral, romantic Romany “The Alley”, an ode to a lost world, and there’s a definite feeling of a world that has been lost on the record, whether it is Gypsy caravans run off the road, pre-Castro Cuba, the dusty Mexican northwest that is now the dusty American southwest, or the Yiddish villages sacrificed to pogroms and the Holocaust. Not that it is a ‘down’ record – 100 Lovers is as much a celebration as an elegy, nowhere more so than on the pseudo-titular “100 Other Lovers”, uplifting and inspired with world beauty & rhythm. Along with “The Alley” and the nervous, frantic energy of “All the Sand In All the Sea”, 100 Lovers begins on a very high note.
It doesn’t stay there, however, as DeVotchKa overreach a bit with the strings-grand “The Common Good”, and then stay largely darker and more salsa than borscht. The more tragic Spanish sounds stand out some of the time (“Contrabanda”), and there’s even mariachi (“Bad Luck Heels”), but some of the ambition and fire is gone. Not that the tracks sound ‘too world’ – there are hints of the complex rhythms and strains of Wolf Parade (QRO live review) and others in the alternative music First World.
Last year, DeVotchKa headed out on tour with Gogol Bordello (QRO live review), and it would seem to be a match made in heaven, as they might be the only two acts in the indie music world who borrow so much from world music. But whereas the Bordello have faded somewhat into repetition since first bursting so brightly, DeVotchKa have remained steady a strong on their own trail.
