Local Newswire DeVotchKa multi-instrumentalist readies two albums

DeVotchKa fans are getting used to waiting two or three years between albums, and with the Denver band’s latest, 100 Lovers, surfacing earlier this year, it’s likely they should brace themselves for another long stint without fresh material from their favorite world-folk indie act. That’s not to say band members are idly lazing around for months on end, and multi-instrumentalist Tom Hagerman has a couple solo releases ready to prove it.

Hagerman releases Idle Creatures and Water Music on Dec. 6 through the band’s own Cicero Records imprint, giving impatient fans more than an hour and a half of new music to tide them over until the next DeVotchKa effort. Both instrumental affairs, the band tips the albums to be markedly different from one another. Water Music collects highlights from Hagerman’s score for the documentary Where Have All The Mermaids Gone?, a look into that fascinating, fascinating world of commercial fishermen, of which Deadliest Catch fans can’t get enough. It’s a collection of ambient sounds, shoegaze guitars, and electronics. Hagerman gives fans a more traditional album with Idle Creatures, an instrumental effort that mixes chamber-pop string arrangements with that eclectic-influence globetrotter’s aesthetic for which Hagerman’s full-time band is so well known.