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It’s oddly fitting that DeVotchKa hails from Denver Colorado and not any of the Eastern European meccas that their music conjures. If they were from some far-flung land it’d make the story too simple. As it stands they’re a wonderful anomaly — a band that sounds like they could be from anywhere and any time.
Genre descriptions don’t really work when describing DeVotchKa. World music is the easiest starting point as the band draws from klezmer mariachi and other folk roots. Still they don’t have any of the other hallmarks of world music — they’re not using these sounds as a call for unity or global brotherhood and they’re certainly not striving for some kind of ethnic authenticity.
Gypsy punk is another term that gets thrown around along with comparisons to New York’s Gogol Bordello. That band’s punk influence is far more blatant though. DeVotchKa may embrace some of punk’s manic energy but their songs are far too well conceived and meticulously arranged to be lumped in with that genre’s sloppy fury.
Maybe it’s best to say that DeVotchKa is a band that doesn’t like to limit its options. It’s not hard to picture the group backing a burlesque troupe as they did in their early days. It’s equally easy to see what inspired the makers of 2006’s Little Miss Sunshine to approach the band about scoring the film’s Grammy-nominated soundtrack. The abundance of influences the band effortlessly incorporates into A Mad and Faithful Telling allows them to move through a powerful emotional range that’s almost inherently cinematic.
Album opener “Basso Profundo” is a party in itself with a powerfully energetic wordless singalong of a chorus. “Transliterator” on the other hand is far more subtle moving from subdued strings and horns to a punchy pleading chorus of banjo and a surprisingly lovely keyboard bridge. As “Undone” waltzes above its bouncing tuba you can almost see the gypsy girls and costumed gentleman spinning and dancing. All of it is anchored by Nick Urata’s passionately raspy vocals and their impressive emotional (and musical) range.
In lesser hands the album’s ambitions could result in ham-fisted stabs at multiculturalism and a muddled mess of influences. DeVotchKa are remarkably capable though. Like Montreal’s Lhasa they seem to be able to tap into the world’s different musics on an instinctive level and create something that’s at once sprawling and accessible ambitious and entirely grounded. A Mad and Faithful Telling is then a hell of an achievement.
