We continue the story of infernal accountants The Devil Makes Three. Today we will take a look at the new album Spirits 2025, which is a kind of return to the musical origins of the band, as well as take a look at some earlier live performances. But let’s start right away with the most delicious!
Namely, from the latest album. Let the chronological order rest for now, given the significance of this record, as well as its novelty. There is a lot of novelty here. At least start with the composition. Unfortunately, Lucia Turino is leaving the band, and the equally colorful double bass player and backing vocalist MorganEve Swain is taking her place. The line-up changes don’t end there. And although officially the Devil still thinks in three, throughout almost the entire record the listener is accompanied by light drums performed by Stefan Amidon and Ted Hutt, when it comes to percussion. The latter is the producer of the record. He previously worked with the rabid Celts Dropkick Murphys and many others, so his tambourine is a kind of cameo. Anyway, with their brushes and shakers, the drums fit into the alt-cantre concept much better than Chains Are Broken: the sound retains the necessary acoustic woodenness, which is certainly pleasing. We have enough electric showboats as it is.
Spirits (2025)
The album was recorded at Dreamland Studios, located in the Woodstock Woods of New York State in a former church building, which adds a godly flavor to the devils.
So, let’s take a closer look at the songs.:
02 Spirits
03 Ghosts Are Weak
04 Half As High
05 Hard Times
06 The Devil Wins
07 The Dark Gets The Best Of You
08 Fallen Champions
09 The Gift
10 Divide And Conquer
11 I Love Doing Drugs
12 Poison Well
13 Holding On
Listen online or download The Devil Makes Three – Spirits (2025) (mp3 320 Kbps, 108 Mb)
The opening track Lights On Me sounds like a nod to the work of Digger Barnes. There are too many peaceful otherworldly breaths here. Could the abandoned church have had such an impact?
Intriguing blues notes accompany the next Spirits song, the title track on this album. Such a sing-along chorus adds to the hitness of this song.
There may be too many spirits, but ghosts are weak! On the third track, Ghosts Are Weak, the trademark sardonic optimism finally appears.
This feeling is fully revealed in Half As High. Cooper’s funny solo melody only strengthens the life-affirming vibes.
The next song suggests exhaling and sitting on a bench after a hard day. Hard Times enchants with a soft intro and adds to this charm by playing the banjo.
The Devil Wins reminds you that things don’t always go well, even if you try very hard. Using the example of this song, you can see how much the band has stepped forward. It resembles the earliest works, quite simply and unpretentiously. But how the backing tracks and percussion color it!
The gloomy warning of The Dark Gets The Best Of You is gradually being covered by the heavy coolness of a summer evening. That’s the kind of evening you get in deserted villages that Americans call cities for some reason.
One for all and all for one! Only the local Musketeers were released. Fallen Champions tells us that history doesn’t like losers.
The Gift sounds like the doppelganger of the title song. It’s a very similar motif, but it’s kind of stuffy, like coming from the gloom of a dingy bar or a gloomy cluttered apartment.
Divide And Conquer tells with its trademark irony about the inevitability of conflicts in human history. It’s very sad, but with the accompaniment of the banjo and violin, you realize that all this is just a law of nature.
The next song frankly surprised me. I have never heard such a frank confession of a lover of illegal substances, even from black lovers of tongue twisters. I Love Doing Drugs is filled with irony to the brim.
Poison Well fits a few Latin American notes into the musical palette that has grown to the limit. Almost unnoticeable, but nevertheless bossanova is clearly present in the aftertaste of this song.
And the album ends with the most traditional-sounding Holding On. The soothing violin, the powerful packs of backing tracks in the chorus – all this together gives the perfect calm ending to this outstanding record.
What’s outstanding about it is that the period of experimentation is finally over, and here are the very same The Devil Makes Three that were in the early noughties, only cooler. Everything here is rich and appropriate. The sound of the album is very warm and lively. It can be used as a closet from the Chronicles of Narnia, because a thousand little things literally transport the listener to an abandoned church, where music from the dusty wooden world sounds. Along with the first DM3 records, I put this album in the favorites category.
The Devil Makes Three – Live
But what did we miss? Out of curiosity, I want to draw your attention to Kexp The Devil Makes Three Live in Studio (2015). This is an on-air recording from Kexp–fm, a well-known Seattle radio station. On the recording, you can find a curious performance of several songs, as well as an extremely emotional interview.
It is also worth noting the most powerful live album Live at Red Rocks of 2019. He sort of draws a line under all the previously accomplished path of the group.
And we will wait to see what else this trio of magicians will reveal. Without a doubt, Devil Makes Three (or DMT) is one of the few truly strong teams in America that are not going to back down.
