Some of my most gratifying musical relationships have been incidental. I am not really talking about what we “discover” when listening to the radio because it’s hard to call it that. As if the the discovery is more ours and less the work of the studio dollar or a complex algorithm. Radio is a selective backdrop, it gives me what I want (most of the time) and so as a result we have a relationship of complacency; rarely does it exposes me to music I feel is genuinely a happy accident.
Film, however, has incited a number of these “happy accidents”, moments when something stirs me because I wasn’t looking for it. A sort of uninvited guest who gets so comfortable in the living room of my head I forget that when they first arrived they put their feet up, drank my beer, and ate the last of the cheesy puffs. Calories aside, DeVotchka was most definitely a well received surprise. Hailing from Denver, Colorado with theremin, sousaphone and guitar in hand (the rest of the instruments I must assume are in the trunk). DeVotchka spring-boarded into the spotlight in 2006 for their collaboration with composer Mychael Danna on the soundtrack for Little Miss Sunshine, the story of a mismatched family determined to get their young daughter (Olive) into a beauty pageant––a cross-country journey gone mental. The resulting misbegotten road trip and broken family dynamic shapes the film into a feast of awkward humor and heart.
It is a visual vibrant story, saturated by deep, warm colors, a cast of selfless and at times insufferable characters (who didn’t want to throttle Greg Kinnear during the diner sequence?) and a band whose sound borders the line between contemplation and crescendo. What feels particularly charming about the soundtrack is that I don’t associate the music or even a particular song with a scene. To me, it’s all about color. Devotchka’s repertoire sounds like sun-burned yellow, opaque blue, and dried red, a bright filmic wallpaper laid flat and smooth across the expanse of the narrative. Something to lean against, to feel on your skin.
Musically the group falls under a self-invented sub-genre I like to call vagabond, as DeVotchka’s music seems to wander through the self-imposed in-betweens of Slavic folk, Mariachi, brass, and indie-rock. It is a group with the utmost respect for the power of the instrument; in concert they pay hommage to the appearance of each, a celebration of mixed harmonics. In the film the vocals and long melodies of the group are a permanent fixture, ebbing in and out as the Hoover’s Volkswagen Microbus rolls down stretches of heat-blistered asphalt. For all its in-betweenness DeVotchka is a very faithful travel companion.
At times the music is selfsame, so non-intrusive and spacious that all it manages to do is create a feeling of continuity. Bluntly put it’s “road music”, massaging the story to create a sense of progression. Characters who at times want nothing to do with each other are trapped together in what seems to be a constantly moving vehicle and the music is there to pass the time, both for them and for us. At worst it’s a kind of “elevator music,” nice to have to fill the silence but altogether an empty gesture of emotional resonance.
But there are moments. Pricks of sound where the music tries to go deeper, tries to draw a bit of blood from its melodiously sedated audience. In the opening sequence, cut to The Winner Is, the instruments themselves seem to be suffering from the same shortness of breath as all the characters, a moment of visual and auditory cohesion that creates a sense of development and pathos. Other musical cues do not share the same equality and the resounding reverberations of Devotchka on the soundtrack are more hollow. Like the whistling of a kind wind they take us in, sooth us, and leave us lulling.
Touching music through film always feels purer than searching it out in the caverns of Pandora and Spotify. You find something precisely because you’re not looking for it. Little Miss Sunshine is a film engaged in the documentation of the neuroses and triumphs of a family, and Devotchka is just the band playing their anthem. Not eye-opening, but definitely earnest, perhaps even earnest enough to warrant a listen. It is after all music that I would call a “happy accident”.
Artists
Devotchka, How It Ends, also called The Winner Is (in collaboration with Mychael Danna)
Mychael Danna, 2013 Academy Award Winner for Best Original Score, Life of Pi
Recommendations: Basso Profundo, The Man from St. Sebastian, Comrade Z, Contrabanda