On Thursday, Paul Krugman did his usual music post a day ahead, Friday Night Music, Early Edition: San Fermin. He wrote, “Yes, I know it’s Thursday — but they have a new record just out…” Well, I had to check out San Fermin. But I was skeptical. Krugman has very definable taste. There is probably a name for it. I think of it as: middle age white guy indie. And San Fermin was no exception.
I’m not saying it is bad. Like all of Krugman’s favorite music, it is professional and relatively creative. But it is never anything really good. It is more style than substance. It is never upsetting. It is the sort of thing that you would think that a modern day Nobel Prize winning economist would listen to. I should be glad he is into it and not middle Romantic Period classical music. And I am!
But what I’m not going to do is pass on this group’s music. I listened to a number of their songs online and I didn’t like a single one. It is possible to do music with this kind of sound and be captivating. DeVotchKa is such a group. I never get tired of them, even though their sound is largely unchanged. But it all has a passion and flavor that I just don’t hear in San Fermin — or most of the music Krugman is interested in. So we will listen to a song I’ve written about before, The Man from San Sebastian from their 2011 album 100 Lovers.
Wonderful song — it’s a highly polished sound but it still feels like it has that weird foreign (I presume local) tinge to it.
OK — God knows why I’m typing this, maybe because I’m barely awake on a few hours of sleep, but the single best live act I ever saw in my life was a band called “Cordelia’s Dad.” They started out doing rock-y versions of ancient American folk songs and eventually settled into doing tight as hell, 3-0r-4-piece acoustic versions of those songs. I caught them near the end of their performing career (I think they all teach, now) when a free magazine I picked up for reading material in a bar, devoted to thrash metal or something similarly loud, praised their album “Spine” as being amazing and full of music “as old as towns.”
“Spine” isn’t their best album (“Comet” is) but it has some knockout numbers on it. Here’s the band doing the leadoff track from “Spine,” a relatively recent song (maybe only 100 years old or so) and seeming rather half-assed about it, it’s the highest-quality video I could find. Half-assed and long into their adult livelihoods, they are still tight as hell.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=831LMyfMRBI
Thanks for the recommendation. I will check them out. I’m always looking for knew stuff for the Morning Music posts.
Yes, DeVotchKa has a lot of eastern European influences. I love their stuff.