Search - DeVotchKa :: How It Ends

My favorite local Eastern-European bohemian dance band.

G. Merritt | Boulder, CO | 11/04/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Listening to local band DeVotchKa in my car is the next best thing to driving through Eastern Europe with the radio on. Listening to DeVotchKa on my iPod is the next best thing to experiencing the band performing live here in Boulder. DeVotchKa is an indie-alt-rock band that is on the verge of obtaining the wider audience it deserves. My first encounter with DeVotchKa occurred when front man, Nick Urata (vocals, guitar, bouzouki, theremin and piano), opened the show for Todd Rundgren at the Boulder Theater earlier this year with his haunting voice. I then experienced DeVotchKa again on Halloween night, when the full band (dressed as gypsies), including Jeanie Schroder (tuba, bass, bowed vibes), Tom Hagerman (violin, accordion, organ, bowed vibes), Shawn King (drums, vibraphone, trumpet, glockenspiel), and Urata electrified the Boulder Theater with its Eastern-European bohemian music (mostly from this cd). DeVotchKa's music defies mainstream dumbed-down popular music, and unless you already have the band's two previous cds (check out UNA VOLTA), it's unlikely you have anything else in your collection that sounds like this one. Stand out tracks include "You Love Me." "Enemy Guns," "How It Ends," and "Such a Lovely Thing." Highly recommended.



G. Merritt"

Original, Amazing, Uncontrolable talent.

Brian J | Gilbert, AZ | 03/08/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Devotchka is a band that really hit me sideways and im still reeling. I discovered the band through thier hauntingly fantastic song "How it Ends" which is featured the trailer of the movie "Everything is Illuminated." I had listened to the single for a few months and then decided to research the band, expecting to find a one hit wonder that couldnt live up to "How it ends". I couldnt have been more wrong. Song after song is brilliantly written, and sounds like nothing else you have ever heard.



And to the two star review on here. You gripe is that you like Gogol and not this band, and say its becuase this band wasnt that lively. Devotchka IS NOT a Punk band. Not only are they not a Punk Band, but they are not this Yellow Card, Simple Plan, Fallout Boy trash. This is a band that has lyrics that are written as smoothly and interestingly as classics John Lennon, Bob Dylan, and others. The music carries the wind of marachi music, with russian music that mixes in a beautiful Way.



Get this album and become hooked."

Uneven for me, but can't get enough of the highlights

JeFF Stumpo | Bryan, TX United States | 03/27/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"For me, How It Ends is a somewhat uneven album - I'll specifically note which songs I like and don't like below - but I find myself listening to the pieces I do like over and over (and over).



The album starts off a bit iffy for me. "You Love Me" is forgettable. I don't hate it, it's just not particularly better or worse than any other song I'd hear on the radio.



"The Enemy Guns" signals a change in pace and style and message, and it is a welcome one. There's a visceral energy here that got me to keep listening.



"No One Is Watching" is a 28-second instrumental, which would suggest to me a transition track, but it doesn't match up with the prior or next tracks in any way, shape, or form. It's an interesting sound, but is too short to "get into" and doesn't get us from A to B. Throwaway track.



"Twenty-Six Temptations" is the first track that made me think there was something imaginative happening on the album. A bassline produced by tuba? A high, haunting voice over a latin rhythm? It's a song that made me work to understand it. That's a rare thing, and appreciated here.



"How It Ends" is beautiful - sparse and repetitive in a proper way, excellent use of crescendo just after the chorus, sad. Another keeper. It also follows "Twenty-Six Temptations" in a good way, thematically.



"Charlotte Mittnacht (The Fabulous Destiny of...)" is a wonderful instrumental piece. Whereas "No One Is Watching" just sort of sticks out, "Charlotte Mittnacht" acts, for me, as a surreal followup to "How It Ends" as well as developing in its own right. Can you have trance music without the thumping electronica? Trance polka? Because this is a polka, but polka as conceived by someone living inside the painting Starry Night.



"We're Leaving" keeps up the energy. I'm once again jarred as, after the Parisian/Slavic (if it sounds odd combining those two, listen to the whole piece to understand why) feel of "Charlotte Mittnacht," we come across a Mariachi band. In contrast to the happy brass, the lead singer's voice is desperate solitary here, and it works excellently. What begins as a carpe diem message slowly drowns in its own history, and the singer who exuberantly leaves is left alone.



"Dearly Departed" on the other hand, annoys me to no end. It may because the lyrics here are just insipid. I don't look to DeVotchKa for great lyrics, but after the lonely power of "We're Leaving," it just sounds obnoxious and thin to hear a drawn out "Sweetheart / How I miss your heart / Beating next to mine."



"Such A Lovely Thing" picks up the pace yet again, a rollicking, near-drunk romp through several ethnic styles that spirals faster and faster as the piece goes on, nearly spinning out of control but managing to just continually raise the bar for five minutes.



"Too Tired" gives us a moment to calm down with a crooning love song(set to a glockenspiel so high it might be a music box). Again, the oddly paired elements blend beautifully here.



"Viens Avec Moi" is an off-key wonder. Make the normally high voice an effective bassline, pair it with a frenetic accordion, and just dance (dirty). I wish U2 could have heard this song when working on Zooropa.



"This Place Is Haunted" does nothing for me. It's nice, it's pretty, but doesn't stick out in my head hours later. Worse, it sticks out at first because it is so different than "Viens Avec Moi." No time to come down, just jumping into harps and softness. On its own, it may work, but the poor placement on the album is problematic for me.



"Lunnaya Pogonka," another instrumental piece, is once more action-packed, but a creepier piece, one that takes its time coming up and then shows you the aftermath. A better followup to "Viens Avec Moi," and probably would have been the best way to end the album - it takes us into DeVotchKa's crazy layering of sound, but then lets us down and shows the lonely end to the party as well. The most varied piece on the album.



"Reprise" is OK. Sorry to damn with faint praise, but reprises work best when the album as a whole has a consistent arc to it. These songs did not, and so the concept of a reprise seems tacked on to me.



I find myself giving a couple of songs five stars, a few more than that four stars, and then a couple of twos. As a whole, I think the album could have been arranged with more thought, but I ultimately think it worth four stars."