#strange devotion

[wirsindesnicht]

[dustedmagazine]

Maura Weaver — Strange Devotion (Feel It!)

Maura Weaver hides a razor edge in pillowy atmospheres of dream pop, her music all coo and chime until it goes for a vein. The singer, out of Cincinnati, has one previous solo album to her credit, as well as some juvenilia in the garage pop outfit called Mixtapes. This sophomore LP gains heft and urgency as it goes on, the bass ratcheting up, the guitars picking up the buzz of rougher, feedback sound. But Weaver herself stays cool and serene in the midst of it all, her voice as softly engaging over sirening, rock-forward “The Face” as in the electro-pop shimmer of “Prince.”

Weaver recorded Strange Devotion with long-time collaborator John Hoffman at a possibly haunted studio called The Lodge in Dayton, Kentucky (it’s a converted Masonic Lodge). Maybe that accounts for the reverberating, dream-casting indefiniteness of this set of songs, which, however upbeat and joyful, seem to hover and float. “Back Home” is propulsive but slippery, its melody hemmed in by criss-crossing vocal parts, its pushing rhythm blurred and softened. It sounds a lot like Brenda Sauter’s Wild Carnation project, a wild keening prisming into harmonies, while the rock song pummels on.

“I’m Not Sleeping” evokes the Cars, with its taut strummed cadence and its wiggy eruptions of keyboards. It rocks pretty hard, but Weaver never shows the strain. Her verses unfurl with clean, tuneful ease—no gulps, grunts or howls. And yet, there’s a bit of a tricky defiance to her delivery, however sweetly it goes down. She reminds me a lot in this one of Colleen Green, who spins a pretty tune without tolerating any sentiment.

This is one of those records where even the best intentioned verbiage will, by its nature, miss the point. It’s a sharp and dreamy interval of girl pop, and who can say, really, why it sounds so good?

Jennifer Kelly

[permanentdanger]

Strange Devotion - Danger Line (1982)

[tumbloar]

Strange Devotion - Danger Line

[vivianvog]

I've been so lucky to cross the path of the owner of the Mauerstadtmusik label in Berlin.

This is one of the label's reissue, a rare song on 7' from the band Strange Devotion.