The Devastations
Yes, U

Berlin is a vast city, with more than three million inhabitants, massive parks, and gleaming buildings, glass and steel; this is the skyline of a historic city where the intersections of races and cultures create an artistic ferment that spans from music to painting, from cinema to literature, as if it were a sort of revenge against that wall, which in the past had stifled the life and hopes of millions of people.

And it is here that the Devastations decided to record their third album, under the Beggars Banquet label, Berlin not by chance, Berlin as the capital of Europe, for them Australians like the Birthday Party and the Go Betweens, Berlin a source of inspiration and of dark melancholy, Berlin mixed with London and with the rest of the world, electronic structures that reconnect with the classic songwriting, Kraftwerk meeting John Cale, the small club and the big stadium. "Yes, U" is an instant photograph capturing the image of Leonard Cohen with the Can, passing through Bauhaus, a sonic alchemy that whispers and screams, in the night, a romantic escape with iridescent charm.

"Yes, U" follows the splendid "Coal" and "The Devastations", menacing and dilated it confirms the talent of the trio, positioning them in a sound space that lies between Tindersticks and American Music Club, its open and intense structure places it at the center of the world, just like the streets of Berlin, today touristy and commercial, with short memory, a journey in the small urban neighborhoods, hidden and linked by the great roads, which menacingly bring a flow of people, distracted, only attentive to modernity and the ephemeral, forgetting history.
And this is exactly the air you breathe on this album, that of the small neighborhoods, narrow alleys, and suffocating cellars fill up with the sounds of these 10 tracks, which scream and whisper, accompanied by a sound on the verge between the 80s and 2000, a sound close to the heartbeat, warm and enveloping, gothic and refined.

"Black Ice" sounds like a Giorgio Moroder melody that accompanies the scenes of a psychological drama, exciting and erotic in a 70s film, "Oh Me, Oh My" is a distorted and feedbacked fantasy that brings to mind the best scenes of David Lynch, ethereal and hypnotic, "Rosa" is the centerpiece of the album, Hugo's menacing drums accompany the "long" guitar, while Conrad Standish's voice sings like he's Nick Cave in an apocalyptic crescendo that releases all the anger of a violated city with a violent history, as if Dinosaur Jr covered the Black Heart Procession, the songs on "Yes, U" never explode, but pulse and contract, almost cough, as in "The Pest", repetitive and claustrophobic, it digs inside and circulates within the soul, with no way out, deep inside it wedges in search of the parasite, and in "As Sparks Fly Upwards" it finds the exit, an immense space reveals itself, freedom and future.

"The intermittent light of the sign illuminates my room, every evening, street noises accompany my life, as my shadow lengthens from the bed to the easel, the music amplifies the sensations, I suffocate, and I am full of love"

The album closes with "Misericordia", an instrumental track that resembles an Ennio Morricone soundtrack, Beautiful, really, everything.