It's all Greek – and Romany too

Published on Friday 14 March 2008 16:53

Weird instruments and even stranger influences aside, DeVotchKa's music is just pop, they tell Jonathan Trew

SITUATED on the plains of Colorado, Denver isn't the most obvious place to go looking for Eastern European folk punk, but then DeVotchKa would rather set fire to their natty suits while wearing them than deliberately do anything obvious. A four-piece who play at least 12 instruments, their career has seldom crossed paths with the route marked convention. Their imminent fifth album, A Mad And Faithful Telling, is as leftfield as might be expected for a band that makes much of the sousaphone while naming themselves after the Clockwork Orange slang for young girls.

Their dark mix of Romany, Greek, Slavic and Mariachi music with folk, punk and indie has led them to some unusual places. For a while, they were the house band for Dita von Teese's burlesque show. An experience which frontman Nick Urata summarises as "a neat gig". Later, they toured with everyone from their friends and musical peers Gogol Bordello to von Teese's former hubby, Marilyn Manson. In between taking their often theatrical show to ever bigger audiences, they were picked up to provide the musical score for the cult smash film Little Miss Sunshine, work which saw them nominated for a Grammy in 2006.

As well as being the group's frontman, Urata is at the core of its musical outlook. Although born and raised in suburban New York and Chicago, he has Sicilian grandparents, gypsy blood and campfire concerts in his family roots. Like many American kids growing up in the Eighties, hair metal had a certain gaudy allure but musically his heart lay in older European traditions.

"My grandparents were musicians and I idolised them," he says. "They represented this exotic world I was always yearning for."

There is some irony in the idea that DeVotchKa's music fulfils the clich about America being a melting pot of influences and yet sounds anything but American. Mention that his band sounds decidedly un-American and Urata is rather pleased. "Thank God for that," he says. "It was always our mission to try and do something different even if it meant falling flat on our faces. You are always looking for your own niche musically and I was always yearning for Old World sounds rather than playing metal guitar, fun as that can be."

Urata is the first to admit that his quest for Old World exoticism might be a little quixotic but it has not stopped him searching for it. Even when the results haven't been quite what he expected. "Maybe that Old World aesthetic doesn't exist anymore," he muses. "Perhaps I'm pining away for the past. A few months ago, I went to Budapest for the first time, found this ancient-looking pub, went in and they were playing Journey, exactly what I was trying to escape. I'm in an 800-year-old pub in Budapest and what do I hear? Classic American rock."

Although keen to avoid the guitar, drums, chicks and hot rods orthodoxy of American rock, Urata is suspicious of the 'world music' tag, preferring to see DeVotchKa in the context of rock or pop. "One of the parts of our manifesto was to use exotic instruments but to make the songs accessible," he explains. "There are pop songs at the centre of our songs and that is nothing to be ashamed of even if it might not be something you want to do in your more rebellious years."

Another way of thinking of their music is in terms of theatre. Twist his arm and Urata will admit to a love of musical theatre. Twist it further and he will cough to admiring the songs of Rodgers and Hammerstein. Scantily clad women aside, backing the burlesque show was an ideal vehicle for DeVotchKa as it allowed them to make the most of their taste for putting on a show.

"We had a flair for drama and that just encouraged us to be more dramatic. I think people want to escape and to be taken away to another place in a show. I try not to be melodramatic but I like it to be a little dark, nightmarish even."

Louche artists, hopeless love affairs and tragic endings all play a significant part in the band's songs. The DeVotchKa repertoire doesn't have quite the body count of your average blues album but upbeat endings are thin on the ground. "That's a recurring theme in our work and our lives," says Urata. "We are not Goths but we are not exactly shiny, happy people either. My favourite books or movies always have these characters that you fall in love with but know that they are doomed."

• A Mad And Faithful Telling is out on Anti-Records tomorrow. DeVotchKa play King Tut's, Glasgow (0141-221 5279), April 6, www.devotchka.net