deVries
Death To God
Noise On Noise
The best band known by the singer’s last name since Morrissey? Hmmm. deVries is at the very least up there with Goldfrapp and a damn sight better than Dokken or Slaughter. Travis DeVries was the singer in cult Seattle band the Turn Ons, but with that group’s recent dissolution, he has given himself over to his own more ambitious and star-crossed muse. There’s otherworldly mystery and ambition aplenty on this album, amply clear from looking at the cover: Nietzschian title, a picture of a nymphlike, androgynous boy perched on a bed of nails like Chatterton on his fainting couch, and a photo on the inside of DeVries himself looking like Sonic Boom or Arthur Rimbaud, all preteen haircut and death-gaze-focus. The music within is pleasing to these ears – a mix of Brian Jonestown Massacre, Automatic-era Jesus and Mary Chain, Stone Roses, the Church, with hints of Ride and Spiritualized. That’s the good fucking stuff, buddy. All crystalline guitar, asexual, dazed vocals, and shuffling rhythms. Listen to the loping, metronomic rhythms of “Girl in the Fur-skin Rug” holding in check fuzzed-out guitar strums and a childlike, sibilant vocal – bliss.
Noise On Noise: http://www.noiseonnoise.com
