“I asked God for a good job. He put me on a plane. All of the people that I love, the people that I’m from, are far away.”
So begins ĄDon’t Hurry for Heaven!, the new record from Virginia’s Devon Sproule. Perhaps a hint of homesickness is understandable. Not only did Ms. Sproule spend much of the last two years touring abroad, her new album -- produced by husband Paul Curreri and featuring the pedal steel playing of the legendary BJ Cole -- was recorded, for the most part, in England.
“Last year was a good one,” Sproule says, “and full of adventures. I drove myself all the way from Scotland on the left side of the road for a radio show. I learned the intro to “Johnny B. Goode” before 8am in a Spanish hotel. I even smoked a J with Lucinda Williams and kept my cool.”
“Musically,”
she continues, “after a whole summer of festivals in the UK, my band
was feeling great. Everything was. It wasn’t even raining
that much!
It would’ve been a shame not to capture something from that time, to
let that phase of our playing evaporate into the next. So we
booked
this studio out in the country.”
Conveniently,
Sproule’s husband, the formidable guitarist, songwriter and burgeoning
producer Paul Curreri, was about to cross the pond for his own European
tour. Curreri flew over three days early and under his direction,
the
group tracked eight songs at Far Heath Studios in
Northamptonshire.
“They had donkeys and ducks and everything -- just like home!” laughs Curreri. “As for Dev’s band, they were tight when I got there. I never had to say, ‘Hey mister drummer, could you put a bit more ruffle in that rumba? Cool, daddio.’ Instead, it was just, ‘Great... Let’s have a beer and try one a little slower, a little lazier.’” From there, Curreri brought the tracks back to the couple’s home studio in Virginia. A few weeks later, ĄDon’t Hurry for Heaven! was complete.
Continuing in the tradition of her
previous works, ĄDon’t Hurry for Heaven!
sports a variety of sonic influences: the title track -- a tipsy,
twangy, spousal nudge -- wears a cowboy boot on one foot, and another
on its head. The great Jesse Winchester, a fellow
Southerner
(and hero of Sproule’s), makes a cameo on the uber-groovy “Ain’t That
the Way.” Sproule and Curreri even duet on a left-field,
desert-bluesy
version of Black Uhuru’s “Sponji Reggae.”
At the record’s thematic heart is a young
woman longing for the daily hiccups of a balanced home (“On
a drive, nowhere going, / Gravel popping, tape deck whirring, / Happy
couple talk a back road, / Face a thistle with a backhoe”), even
while lifelong dreams are quite literally coming true around her.
The
songs are about her friends, family, herself, her husband — or at least
versions of them seen through the lens of geographical distance.
But
these character sketches ring bona fide; these people seem
familiar. “I had a river growing up. I had a pond. / I
had barely a secret. And now I have none.” Sproule
roots for the home team, and she’s telling everybody.
Sproule’s domestic leanings, youthfulness, and romantic sense of humor are deepened by a hurling undercurrent of musical ambition and multi-genre awareness. The album’s solo, jazz-infused closer, “A Picture of Us in the Garden,” signs off with, “Honey, how are we supposed to ever have us a family / when the business won’t give us a buck? / I guess it’s lucky I’m still pretty young.” Perhaps it’s her effortless delivery of the deceptively complex melody, or her charmingly badass guitar work, or the economic poetics of her pleading, but the song throws into relief what lies at the root of all of these compositions -- an infectious vitality, a desire to push forward while continuing to love what got you this far.
Sproule’s last record, 2007’s Keep Your Silver Shined, was the lead-off release for the Coventry-based label Tin Angel Records and proved an indie hit in the UK, Ireland and Europe. Sproule toured with Woodstock legend Richie Havens, Lambchop frontman Kurt Wagner, and supported back-to-back nights in London with Lucinda Williams. She was the first American to grace the cover of fRoots in the new millennium, and her appearance on Later...With Jools Holland cocked the ears of fans and industry alike, informing them that yes, her surname does indeed rhyme with “rock ‘n roll.”
