{"id":349226,"date":"2025-11-02T01:12:17","date_gmt":"2025-11-02T01:12:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/349226\/"},"modified":"2025-11-02T01:12:17","modified_gmt":"2025-11-02T01:12:17","slug":"devotchka-died-and-came-back-as-rebel-lounge-legends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/349226\/","title":{"rendered":"DeVotchKa died and came back as Rebel Lounge legends"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\"devotchka
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tNick Urata and bassist Jeanie Schroder of DeVotchKa on stage at the Rebel Lounge on Halloween 2025.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Sam Eifling<\/p>\n

On Friday night DeVotchKa took the stage at the Rebel Lounge in the dark \u2014 which, if you know the venue, is saying something \u2014 and kicked off with the theme to the 2018 \u201cHalloween\u201d with frontman Nick Urata joining John Carpenter\u2019s synth<\/a> with a haunted-sounding theremin accompaniment.<\/p>\n

Urata\u2019s voice and the echo effects on his mic invariably make him sound like a spirit gliding through time and space, wailing gypsy poetry from the backyard of the universe. On Friday he looked as well as sounded the part of a haunt. He wore black-on-white skull makeup and a pale jacket with epaulets and embellished trim, like a deceased ringmaster. Brassist-bassist Jeanie Schroder also rocked a sugar skull look beneath the glow of Christmas lights on her sousaphone. On the kit, drummer Shawn King made an unnervingly sinister Joker (Joaquin Phoenix edition).<\/p>\n

As the band launched into \u201cThe Alley,\u201d Urata thanked the crowd for coming out on Halloween<\/a> \u2014 a touching appreciation from a major band in a small room. The Rebel Lounge<\/a>, capacity 300<\/a>, was smooshed tight mostly with fans of a certain age who had indulged in some costumery for the night: a few witches, a fisherman, a strawberry, a butterfly, someone in a full-on mascot tiger getup. \u201cWe\u2019ll make this quick,\u201d Urata said near the top. \u201cWe\u2019ll wrap it up and have some Halloween fun.\u201d The promise of a short set instantly drew a good-natured \u201cboooo!\u201d from the back, distinct on this particular night from a good-natured boo.<\/p>\n

Urata was mostly kidding: the show was its own Halloween fun, and if there was any question as to what kind, he took long tugs from a bottle of red between numbers. They played 12 of their songs plus two covers (the Psychedelic Furs\u2019 \u201cLove My Way\u201d was the other), a tidy set as part of a three-stop weekend mini-tour from their base in Colorado that began in Santa Fe and will wrap at Tucson\u2019s new cathedral venue La Rosa. \u201cThis was the first town we ever came to, when we bought our van,\u201d Urata said. Of course, people loved that. (\u201cThank you for coming back!\u201d someone yelled, as if they weren\u2019t four feet from the stage.) One pictures the temperamental yellow VW van from \u201cLittle Miss Sunshine,\u201d<\/a> the film for which they wrote the score and contributed \u201cHow It Ends,\u201d the 2004 track with the sighing strings and pulsing melancholy keyboard line that made the band famous, or at least famous-er.<\/p>\n

\"devotchkaTom Hagerman on violin, Sergio Mendoza on accordion and DeVotchKa frontman Nick Urata played the Rebel Lounge on Halloween 2025.<\/p>\n

Having one of the most indelible indie groups of the century slip into a cloistered room on a witchy evening felt furtive as a seance, at turns Mexican-bright, psychedelic, dancey \u2014 and ceaselessly achey. The final song before the break, \u201cThe Enemy Guns,\u201d displayed this full sonic kaleidoscope. \u201cWe have given our bodies \/ To the Mexican army \/ But my heart and soul \/ Belong to you my love,\u201d Urata sang. \u201cSo let the enemy guns \/ Cut me to ribbons \/ For my eternal soul \/ Will know the way back home.\u201d What is death, after all, but an excuse for love to burn hotter. The front man whistled the chorus against the jangle of desperado guitar licks and the wheeze of a swooning accordion.<\/p>\n

The band dipped off stage and soon enough opened a two-song encore with, yep, \u201cHow It Ends,\u201d Urata extending his arms to exhort the crowd into the lament of a chorus: \u201cYou aaaaaaaaaalready know \u2026 how \u2026 this \u2026 will \u2026 end.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Halloween of it all, the skull makeup, the echoey call mixed with 300 other voices \u2014 I\u2019m positive some kids with a Ouija Board in an attic somewhere probably heard us piping in faintly from a radio, sounding like a ship of lost souls. As it turned out, though, we didn\u2019t know how this would end. The band hit \u201cContrabanda\u201d like a calvary crashing through a hurricane. Then they stuck around for photos and chit-chat, as Urata rakishly nursed his bottle of wine. It was a holiday.<\/p>\n

Here was the playlist Friday:<\/p>\n