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New noise from Devon Sproule and a super Nice Jenkins

If last Sunday’s auction at the former Gravity Lounge venue was the final spring cleaning of the year, then this week rang in the glut of summertime, a belt-buckling binge after so much purging. Don’t fill up on rolls, people, until you get the rock from these two new albums.

Heavens! Hurry for Devon!

From Silver to gold? Devon Sproule releases her latest album, Don’t Hurry for Heaven, on iTunes.

First, a new batch of ditties from one of our favorite local pretties. If Keep Your Silver Shined was Devon Sproule’s “getting married” album, then Don’t Hurry for Heaven, recently released on iTunes, surveys the emotional landscape of Sproule’s old Virginia block from as nearby as Belmont Park and as far away as Far East, the studio where she and husband Paul Curreri recorded some initial tracks for the 10-song album.

And thanks to a distribution deal with Now Forward Music, Don’t Hurry for Heaven may cover just as much ground. In November, Now Forward signed a two-year distro and marketing deal with City Salvage Records, the label founded by Brooklyn art-country musician Andy Friedman, who was also Curreri’s college roommate. During a January interview with Feedback, Friedman said that Now Forward’s Kindred Rhythm imprint, distributed by Koch Entertainment, would place albums by some City Salvage artists in music retailers like Best Buy for the first time.

“I almost felt like Steve Martin in Three Amigos, when he gets shot with a real bullet and he comes back to Chevy [Chase] and Martin [Short], saying, ‘It’s real!’” joked Friedman at the time.

Don’t Hurry for Heaven bears little resemblance to Silver: Sproule still spreads her lyrics around like a tasteful interior decorator with a pocket full of tchotchkes, but she arranges ’em with a softer vocal touch on tracks like “Bowling Green” and the recent live staple “Ain’t That the Way.” Gone are the rough edges of Sproule’s guitar, rounded by reverb. And Heaven was produced by Curreri, who seems to’ve hit an emotional and aural stride of sorts on his missus’ material.

Is it shinier than Silver? Feedback is going to sit on that question for a week or so; keep listening for more.

Brock me, Amadeus!

No, it’s not a typo; things aren’t always what they seem, readers. Take singing drummers, for example—they’re not all as harmless as Don Henley, you know. And Adam Brock sure as sheeeit ain’t no Eagle.

A longtime member of The Nice Jenkins and part of the current, superlative incarnation of The Invisible Hand, Brock is one of Feedback’s favorite local kit killers. So Feedback was thrilled to grab a copy of a six-song EP from Brock’s solo project, a band and album dubbed “Borrowed Beams of Light.” Stay tuned to the Feedback blog for more on the album.

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