Devotchka stays "Faithful" to its musical vision

By Wes Orshoski

NEW YORK (Billboard) - When he founded Devotchka as an "experiment" more than nine years ago, singer Nick Urata's idea was to blur the line between the musics of East and West, between gypsy and mariachi, tubas and theremins, bouzoukis and guitars.

There was a "pining away for older times and exotic, faraway places," he says. "It was a time when I thought, 'How the hell am I ever going to get there? Why don't we try to get there in the music?"'

At the time, success meant merely being able to keep this experiment afloat, and make some money doing it. While that remains a concern almost a decade later (the group's five indie releases have sold only a combined 80,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan), a lot has changed.

If co-manager Mat Hall recalls days when he had to convince everyone from labels to writers that Devotchka's music wasn't some "world-music nightmare," he and the band now find themselves in such unlikely positions as having to decline fast-food giant McDonald's request to use a Devotchka song in a commercial.

For the majority of listeners in and outside the music industry, Devotchka's meld of unlikely musical bedfellows has proved a hard pill to swallow. But the critically lauded group and its management's long-term strategy of earning one fan at a time is inching toward pay dirt.

Nearing the March 18 release of Devotchka's sixth album, "A Mad and Faithful Telling," Urata's vision -- of creating cinematic music capturing the feeling of "black-and-white movies from another country" and the accordion wedding jams of his childhood -- is enjoying some of the best media attention of the band's career.

TASTEMAKERS TAKE NOTE

In addition to binders of glowing press, Devotchka has been anointed a band to watch by the likes of NPR and Santa Monica, California, public radio station KCRW. Such noncommercial radio fans as KEXP Seattle and KCMP Minneapolis will spotlight the group on the air next month from its performances at the South by Southwest music conference in Austin, Texas.