How It Ends

Devotchka | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 5, 2004)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Cicero Recordings
• ASIN: B0002Y4SVG
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #17,769 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #14 in Music > World Music > Europe > Eastern Europe > Gypsy

Editorial Reviews

Devotchka, How It Ends

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

66 of 72 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My favorite local Eastern-European bohemian dance band., November 4, 2004

By 

G. Merritt (Boulder, CO) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: How It Ends (Audio CD)

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

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Uneven for me, but can't get enough of the highlights, March 27, 2008

By 

JeFF Stumpo (Martin, TN United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: How It Ends (Audio CD)

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.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Just what I needed..., October 24, 2006

By 

Sandy B Ande (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: How It Ends (Audio CD)

I can't stop listening to my DeVotchKa CDs. Over and over. Because something new has to be devoured, not sampled, right? Anyway, I can't get over how pretty their songs are. They use so many different instruments, they're like a rock orchestra that's traveled around the globe and taken samples from music everywhere. Listening to it is like being transported. It's magical. The lyrics are poetic, sometimes so sweet you wanna cry and sometimes so sad you wanna cry. And Nick Urata's voice is one of my favorites now. It's almost operatic at times, dramatic, romantic, and like an old lover calling you home. The music is very cinematic for sure - grand and gorgeous. I'm so glad to have seen Miss Sunshine - not only because it's such a great film, but because I would never have known of DeVotchKa. And they have brightened my world. Even the sad songs are hopeful in sound if not in lyric, and I just feel uplifted after hearing them.