Devon Sproule

Devon Sproule and Mike O’Neill play together on the guitar. They have taken it and made unexpectedly a CD from it. A bird’s eye view:

Devon, revered cultural fetishists, Devon was once folk musician. Rischel Raschel. She had flowers in her hair, a lady beard, guitar handy so that whenever a Lagerfeuerchen hissed, smoked American Spirits, hitchhiked through the states and killed some time, as the saying goes, in Charlottesville, Virginia. There were and are plenty of Quakers.Marble statues of the Founding Fathers and Tommy George, a handful of black-headed gulls, numerous Dunnocks and last but not least, the frequently encountered non-hazardous Karoline Crake. The young blonde Devon at that time was still playing religiously-inspired songs. Well you know, this Joni Mitchell song, to the sad and beautiful expression of the chaperone Joan Baez.

Devon Sproule Miss legs shaved only once a month. Laughed sleek types with tattoos in the face and gave himself about as alternative as currently many of us, armed with backpacks. She was “The Village Voice” therefore fantastic enough to take with barely 16 years old and a plate. “A refreshing-Sweetness” it was said in the dressing room of the critics. Folk, Country and a pinch of jazz. Well, friends, the E, U and F-music, I would love to here more dense from this idyllic setting, surrounded by the North American walnut trees. 
Devon but in the meantime already lived in Berlin, Knicker-buster. Kreuzberg stories up and down, Action Painting, method acting and yoga, it was not a real yoga, with her ​​partner, of course. The left turn grow a facial hair, shaved legs and had a fondness for old buildings. Devon pricked her tattoos on the butt and gave up smoking.

Let us now but go nitty-gritty: The “new” pane of Devon Sproule and Mike O’Neill calledColours and basically proves only one thing: that folk pop goes without cigarettes and plaid shirt.

Let’s talk about us

The songs on the disc of Devon and  Mike  rippling with calm deliberation and to himself. From “homecoming Gehn, bye, ocean, clouds and wind” is mentioned. Magic, Family, Pain. Feel-good songs made ​​for it to lie on meadows, each other to scrape the blades of grass, feed the ducks with bread pieces, to buy eggs from the farmer to paint with hands and stroll in the spring flea markets. With friends to have dinner and bring wine, and anyway at all to cook together. Macchiato Latte to drink to stick photo albums to choose Green, but ballots to forget home. Mike sings sometimes in duet with Devon. Otherwise, he closes his eyes, listens deep into himself and plays his chords.Since his slumbering soul, in this deep soothing guitar belly. Mike has been singing on the second title of the record, what’s going on: “Home, Home, Home» rhymes as on “Bones, Bones, Bones” and it is basically about the return home. No one was there, it teases: ” Magic in the Panic. “ Finding the Lost again, just to be alone. Getting older.

And so it goes also blithely on the disk. Beautiful melodies now and then something jazzy, bass and percussion long-drawn game. The same voice for about an hour. Very cautious, hardly noticeable mini-Solis also come before. It feels like one of those Gelbbauchschnäbler from Virginia, high up in the trees in the nest Geäste sitting or listening on a twig. The head turning, while soul hinbaumelt on. Or, as one of these nimble Spotted Sandpiper that collect, with a full belly bird and tired of locusts, on the lake shore to rest.

Charlottesville, Virginia, not only from a purely ornithological point of view is, irrefutably present on the album Colours . Without much fanfare, the two supply from a cozy window. A disc that is as harmless as greasy handprints on a freshly polished windowpane. An album that has no rough edges. Rather, a full program of “hot chocolate-feelings,” a need for pasta with tomato sauce or detour into the realm of the birds of the Atlantic coast of America; ” You want to wear pajamas and tell stories, best very good and nice friends “ twittered it, as the disc was came out last year.

Review by Jordaan Mason

It’s hard not to think that a title like Colours is meant to evoke autumn. As I’ve been taking in this record, I’ve been watching the leaves change, the sky shift, the moon hang red over the city. And to consider Colours a fall album is somewhat unfair. Sure, it’s matching the mood of the days getting shorter, the desire to go to quieter bars, to stay in and sleep (I’m thinking particularly of the horn parts on songs like “The Fan” and “The Shallow End”). It’s hard not to think of music somewhat seasonally, but this wouldn’t give the full range of Colours its due.

Devon Sproule and Mike O’Neill’s first full collaborative project is a cross-pollination of two very disparate personalities attempting to find a kind of unity. This duet is the heart of the record, which starts to feel like a conversation. On the opening track, Devon Sproule sings, “You can come home.” Mike O’Neill responds, “I can’t go home/ though the wind is getting meaner/ I can feel it in my bones/ nobody’s gonna be there” (“Magic in the Panic”). There’s an intimacy that develops between the two voices as the record progresses; it feels like an exchange of letters between friends at different intervals in their lives.

Some of the lyrics are immediately relatable, such as “I’ve always wanted it since I knew how to want” (“You Can’t Help It”). Others evoke a series of images stitched together, culminating in the kinds of lyrics you want to memorize just so that you can graffiti them onto buildings: “I have swam past his fingers/ they were perfect fifths into rivers/ I have secured to memory the shivers” (“Walking in the Folly”).

Musically, the album is ambitiously eclectic. For every moment that’s classifiable as “country,” for example, there’s a guitar line or a horn part that comes in and breaks any attempt to classify these songs into a single genre. This eclecticism is somehow never distracting—it feels rather organic. The songs that feel Mike-dominant are often much bigger and elaborate in their production, such as in “Talk to You,” whereas Devon tends to stick with more contemplative songs.

But that’s too easy of a dichotomy to make. The addition of Thom Gill and the rhythm section of Bernice noticeably transform many of these songs into something far different than what they may have started out as. This feels particularly true of songs like “Nobody Tells Me a Thing,” which starts off nicely with as a kind of slow-jam end-of-the-night country song with twangy guitars and crooning background vocals, which then builds and explodes into a rampage of electric guitar and keyboard improvisation. The songs are never treated as static objects. Like the words inside them, they grow, evolve, change.

The Colours of the album’s title are not external but rather internal seasons, the kaleidoscope of selves inside of us that we frequently hide and keep to ourselves. These songs allow the full complexity of those internal selves to be exposed and expressed through the confrontation and collaboration with another. An intimacy is ignited as a song is sung, as it is heard, and as it is hummed.