On their first two LPs, the Berlin-based, Australian expats in Devastations were a powerfully atmospheric yet superficially derivative neo-goth band. They could swoon like Tindersticks, chew scenery like Nick Cave, scrape and seethe like Black Heart Procession. But the question remained: Were they simply the sum of their parts? 2006's Coal was satisfying, but it was difficult to figure what the band brought to their sound that was truly specific to them.
On their third album, Yes, U, all of the aforementioned touchstones remain in Devastations' RIYL line, but they've refashioned their influences at the structural level to create a sound that's both classic and singular. It breaks the band's previously narrow influential line, conjuring up affinities as far-flung as Castanets (an oneiric, dirge-like quality) and Luomo (the carefully arrayed and proportioned space). The music oozes like a lava lamp, and its intuitive progression allows for these kinds of evocative-not-literal associations, significantly broadening its scope.
Yes, U forgoes overt verses and choruses in favor of long, unraveling vamps; tempest-in-a-teacup tensions that simmer and boil over; slow-burning bump'n'grinds. It favors restrained power over the raw variety, so the pressurized bass lines round off smoothly, tricked-out cymbal hisses protract crisply, harmonies hover, flanged guitar lines nearly vanish while riotous choked-throttle ones rev up, and sheets of synthesizer ripple. Nothing is left to chance yet these songs feel inspired and organic. "Black Ice" sinks a pointillist grid of hand percussion and bass into a suspension of guitar and keyboard tones, as comb-filtered synth filaments whiz through it like electrical currents. Nothing on Coal felt so alive, and as the first track on Yes, U, it's a winning introduction to the new Devastations. Lest we think "Black Ice" a novelty, "Oh Me, Oh My" follows it with nearly eight minutes of blissed-out kraut-gospel, with a motorik thud buried in sprays of lunar dissonance and curtains of icicle chimes. "Rosa" rides a dark wave of three-pronged bass stabs toward its cacophonous climax, and "The Pest" bends quicksilver guitar distortion around a hypnotically static pulse.
The instrumentation threatens to steal the show yet the vocals-- once central to Devastations' music-- still remain significant. Bassist Conrad Standish and guitarist Tom Carlyon are the primary singers, and while Standish's ghoulish baritone is more striking, both men invest the music with an air of urbane dread that suits its introverted histrionics. They murmur hangdog appeals to absent divinities, write valentines in black blood, issue barbed proclamations that we're not meant to believe: "I'm so interested in life," goes one deadpanned global kiss-off. Seldom do disinterest, world-weariness, and depression sound so interesting, worldly, and darkly euphoric.
