DeVotchKa

Curse Your Little Heart (Ace Fu)

By Kim Newman
Published: August 3rd, 2006 | 12:23pm

On the meticulously culled EP, Curse Your Little Heart, Denver, Colorado, gypsy punks DeVotchKa present five covers and one original tune. Sure, most cover albums tend to be forgetful affairs, tidbits only for the most devoted of fans. It’s rare you’ll find a Fakebook (Yo La Tengo) or Covers Record (Cat Power) and perhaps DeVotchKa were prescient at keeping it short since Curse Your Little Heart comes close. The EP is a tight mélange of sounds as if the quartet is hell-bent on displaying their mastery at evoking emotion in a song. Indeed, with just six tracks, they capture six distinct moods with ease: yearning, mystery, majesty, melancholy, lust, and merriment. The disc starts off with Baldo Rex’s “I Cried Like a Silly Boy,” a sad tale of love with an almost Hawaiian rhythm and Nick Urata’s plaintiff sigh. Next comes the title track, a blend of mariachi and European gypsy music featuring a variety of instruments from woodblocks to maracas. Then, there’s the final track, “El Zopilote Mojado,” a traditional folk song illustrating the band’s skillful musicianship. It makes you want to raise a toast and kick up your heels in a hora. But it’s really with the third track that Curse Your Little Heart hits its mark. One might even be tempted to think that the cover manages to surpass the original in its splendor for in DeVotchKa’s hands Siouxsie and the Banshees’ “Last Beat of My Heart” loses the cold eeriness to become a piece of transcendent brilliance.