Friday night's installment of the Ditson Festival of Contemporary Music was all about text. Whole, grammatical sentences; comprehensible, English, (mostly) well-enunciated; no Italian arias, no liturgical Latin, no repurposed Sanskrit, neither Einstein nor beach—this is not what Bostonist has come to expect from classical music, contemporary or otherwise. And Bostonist has never seen a tenor struggle to maintain a straight face, but Frank Kelley very nearly succumbed during Richard Beaudoin's "Eunoia Songs" (2004), a clever......

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......