Dustin O’Halloran’s intricate production, heaped with layer upon layer of wispy guitars, tinkling pianos, and spooky synth-work, is about as fragile as the toy boat Sara Lov builds for her lover in “A Secret Message to You,” the best track on the duo’s third album, Push The Heart. Backed by a typewriter and accordion, among other “instruments,” Lov succeeds in pushing the heart, evoking a rare longing in the tiny sail she cuts from a magazine and the wood she desperately tries to keep glued together. Not all of Push the Heart is as tender or poignant, though “Lie to Me” is equally pensive and lovelorn, and the lyrics of “Salty Seas” are, if nothing, smartly poetic: “The salty sea behind the eye…The falling leaf that never tries/To hold on to what keeps it alive.” The Devics’s music is chamber pop at its most lush and dreamy—there aren’t even any signs of drums until track four, at which point the music not-quite-explodes into the kind of alt-rock that was popular when the pair first arrived on the music scene in the early ’90s. “Distant Radio” and “Just One Breath,” which was featured in last week’s episode of Grey’s Anatomy, are reminiscent of bands like Throwing Muses and Belly. Emulating that particular sect might not be original but it at least displays O’Halloran and Lov’s good taste.
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