usic like this shouldn’t come from L.A. Its disposition isn’t sunny enough. These songs belong in a smoky speakeasy, slinking along the walls, chain smoking and breaking hearts. It’s the kind of music that doesn’t fit into any one time really. One moment, singer Sara Lov is torching it up, the next she’s knocking down mountains over a clatter of guitars. Not really from the past, and not really from now.


The third album from the Devics doesn’t stray too far from their last. They’re still all about broken hearts, dead lovers, broken hearts, and more broken hearts. They haven’t added drum machines or sequencers. No one got into Dub or Reggae and decided to incorporate it into the mix. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The Devics know how to set a mood. They lay the brooding on thick with big, resonating, production, and layers of spooky strings, bells and bending guitars. It’s the perfect soundtrack to a film noir that was never made, except maybe in your head.


“Heart and Hands” leads off the album with a twinkling piano melody that would sound at home in a scene from The City of Lost Children, or maybe Edward Scissorhand’s house. Whimsical and creepy, all at once. Enter the cello, and down goes the piano into a lower key. Sara Lov’s voice swings back and forth between a near growl and a damsel in distress. Music for your next claustrophobic dream.


Fitting that an album called My Beautiful Sinking Ship sways so much. Guitarist, Dustin O’ Halloran has a real knack for crafting melodies that undulate like waves. They sink and then rise again unexpectedly. As on the very tense, “Gold in the Girl”, where O’Halloran’s twangy guitar lurks and crawls around with the upright bass and gently tapped drums. It all just kind of simmers and finally pops. The tension comes to a head and everything comes falling down around Lov as she sings the most beautiful bile. She’s pissed, but boy is it pretty.


A dirge like rendition of Gershwin’s “The Man I Love”, lets Lov kick the vamp into high gear. Lov is probably one of the only female singers around today with the chops to coo Gershwin’s classic lyrics of longing. This vamp doesn’t really believe her man is coming. It’s one of the most urgent, nearly hopeless takes on this song that I’ve ever heard. Lov is singing the words, “Someday he’ll come along/ The man I love/ And he’ll be big and strong/ The man I love.”, but it’s like she already knows it won’t happen. She doesn’t believe it for a moment. There is no messing around with extraneous instrumentation or string sections here. Just piano, drums, bass, and a voice.


The most beautiful moment on the album is the shimmering, “I Broke Up”. O’ Halloran gently plucks a chiming melody over some ambient guitar and some lovely Rhodes piano. Sara Lov’s vocals float over the music, like she’s being lulled to sleep. It’s some of the loveliest heartbreak I’ve ever heard. You almost forget that this is some sad, sad stuff, and then your heart breaks into a million little tiny pieces.


Sure, this is all very melodramatic. Sure, Lov and O’Halloran’s lyrics veer dangerously close to sophomoric, overblown, teen poetry, but really, what lyrics don’t? It’s supposed to be overblown. It’s supposed to make you feel like the gloomiest bastard that ever walked the Earth. The Devics accomplish all this with grace, beauty and a few catchy melodies. Skulk away kids.