devics live on KCRW
When you hear something as beautiful and endowed with genuine emotion as the music of Devics, you cant help but wonder.Just who are these people anyway? Well, the short answer will hardly raise an eyebrow: Devics is vocalist Sara Lov and multi-instrumentalist and sometimes singer Dustin O'Halloran, a musical duo from Los Angeles who found a home in Italy after signing to the UK label, Bella Union. But the complete answer is as unique and magical as anything in the history of modern music. The story of Devics begins with the birth of Sara Lov in Hawaii. Raised by her mother in Los Angeles after the divorce of her parents, she had a fairly ordinary childhood until the age of four when she was kidnapped by her father a man she describes as a very interesting, intellectual, creative, artistic person, but also a violent sociopath and forcibly relocated to Israel. Destined to grow up without a mother like a surprising number of rock n roll greats, Sara Lov lived under the shadow of an unbalanced international fugitive from justice. A decade before a kindly uncle brought about her repatriation to the United States, Lov foresaw her salvation in music: When I was six, I said Im going to be a singer. Dustin OHalloran, had an equally pleasant early childhood in Los Angeles, distinguished primarily by the fact that he showed himself to be a musical prodigy on the piano at the age of six, finding his calling at the very same age as his future partner. Things changed when illness incapacitated his mother and necessitated the young OHallorans move to his fathers home on the remote Hawaiian island of Kauai. And so the creative core of Devics grew up on opposite ends of the globe, the first abducted and taken to the Middle East, the second reluctantly cast off to a tropical island. As unlikely as it was that Lov and OHalloran should traverse entire continents to form a band, it seems inevitable that these Corsican twins should become romantically involved when they finally met in an art class at Santa Monica College in the mid-nineties. We just instantly clicked, says Lov, We came from the same planet. It was purely to impress Lov that OHalloran first returned to his childhood instrument, and eventually picked up guitar, bass and drums. Their physical relationship cooled a few years later but the two already had a child together in Lovs words, a band called Devics, named after a little-known guardian angel. Whether in tribute to kismet or serendipity, the groups musical output has been as prolific as it has been magnificent ever since. In 1998, shortly after the release of a compilation of early demos entitled Buxom, Devics first proper album arrived on their own Splinter Records, official home to Devics catalog. A fourteen-track manifesto of talent, If You Forget Me. It was after discovering this stunning debut along with a subsequent EP entitled The Ghost in the Girl, that ex-Cocteau Twin Simon Raymonde invited Devics to sign with his Bella Union label. It proved a fitting launching pad for Devics 2001 release, My Beautiful Sinking Ship. The album hit in Europe and led to a series of tours that took Devics all over Western Europe, through the Eastern Bloc and into Russia. With their fan base now centered squarely across the Atlantic, Lov and OHalloran moved to Italy, where noted filmmaker Giuseppe Bertolucci had made Devics a familiar name by using their music to score his 2001 film L'amore Probabilmente. Sequestered in the Italian countryside south of Bologna in a cobwebbed farmhouse a friendly promoter had lent them, OHalloran and Lov began writing and recording music for their next release. The result, an album of mesmerizing beauty entitled The Stars at Saint Andrea, released in 2003, sealed Devics growing fame in Europe. Devics was acclaimed across the board by the British rock mags NME, Uncut and the Times of London. To top off Devics success in 2004, OHalloran released an album of instrumental work entitled Piano Solos, which won four stars from the British publication Mojo as well as the Italian Rolling Stone and received critical attention from classical music critics who likened him to Debussy, Chopin and Beethoven. Together and apart, OHalloran and Lov had won the hearts and minds of progressive European audiences, but what of America? Determined to gain a foothold in their native country, Devics returned to Los Angeles in 2004 to complete work on their fourth album. Their fans will not be disappointed. Push the Heart (release date TBA) is a revelation, a new beginning for Devics that highlights past triumphs and gives the listener a glimpse of heretofore-unseen musical destinations. On June 7, Left Wing Recordings will dangle the carrot in the States by releasing a five-song EP called Distant Radio, featuring five new tracks. And here, in this little sliver of time called the present, the history of Devics awaits its next chapter. -Tara Brown
