When we last saw Devotchka, they occupied a stage the size of a coffee table, and Bostonist was relieved that TT's didn't collapse under the weight of their sousaphone. Returning to Boston on Sunday night, they brought reinforcements, annexing the Paradise Rock Club with horn players and an actual sit-down, read-sheet-music string section.
When frontman Nick Urata wasn't crooning, falsettoing, and shaking his sub-Morrissey quiff, he swapped guitars and bouzouki and, during "Curse Your Little Heart", shook a banana very solemnly. Upright-bassist Jeanie Schroder also shimmied effortlessly under the aforementioned sousaphone, Shawn King climbed out from behind his drum kit to play trumpet, and Tom Hagerman was all over the place, with violin, keyboard, and the crucial accordian, and his bearded, laconic presence dominated the proceedings.
"How It Ends" is one of Devotchka's most heartrending songs and one of their best known (having graced multiple movie trailers): they got this one out of the way early and proceeded to concentrate on rocking out. Even the usually light, breezy confection "I Cried Like A Silly Boy" had unanticipated momentum and density. Devotchka's "Last Beat of My Heart" is the rare Siouxsie and the Banshees cover that actually benefits from additional bombast. (This was, apparently, "SOUSIX" on their cryptic set list.) There was also plenty of material from their recent release A Mad & Faithful Telling—we love that they titled a song "Transliterator", and that it involves a theremin.
The openers held their own. Northampton's Fancy Trash combined disarmingly palatable folk-rock with a surprising urgency, a Jeff Mangumesque howl emerging from catchy tunes arranged for just acoustic guitar and upright bass.
Gentle Canadian singer-songwriter Basia Bulat is not our type, at all, but she charmed this Bostonist back in March and, after Sunday night, our crush is undeniable. Songs from her debut album Oh My Darling have ripened since they were recorded, acquiring subtlety in some cases and drama in others—we enjoyed the spare, acoustic "Pilgriming Vine" and the valorous, martial "Pilgriming Vine" that it became halfway through.
Bulat broke an autoharp string early in her set and said that it was because she was rocking out too hard—but she may have been only half- to three-quarters joking. New songs were faster, relatively aggressive, and satisfying, driven by her brother Bobby's un-folk drumming. Certainly no one could have minded when she returned to the stage during Devotchka's encore. Together, she and Urata sang "You Love Me", the recorded version of which now seems incomplete without Basia Bulat's "hole right through the heart."
From top: Tom Hagerman and the Over-Designed Colored Lights of Doom; Nick Urata; Fancy Trash; Basia Bulat's hips do not lie. Below: Basia Bulat.
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