Ladies dangling from ceilings

"Wait," you're saying. "Is Robot David into Cirque Du Soleil?" No. Well, yes. But that's not what this is.

DeVotchKa, guardians of all things romantic and eastern European, played First Avenue on Wednesday night, and it was fantastic. Their new record A Mad & Faithful Telling is easily one of the best releases so far this year, and when the band played songs from it - "Along The Way" and the majestically discordant "Transliterator" - the audience watched in adoring silence, despite not being too familiar with the tracks.

Since their records are often crammed with strings and various other instruments, I didn't know what to expect for the band's full lineup. It turns out they tour with a strings section ("The DeVotchKa Strings") and, yes, two acrobatic dancers who probably have a different title I should reference. These dancers came out for the last encore, and perhaps you can forgive me for forgetting what song the band played. All I know is that frontman Nick Urata played the theremin while two curtains dropped from the ceiling and two scantily clad women climbed them to the catwalks.
What did you do Wednesday night?

A Mad & Faithful Telling is out now on Anti- Records.

Here's a track from the band's record How It Ends - You Love Me.

Also, I interviewed Urata for the Minneapolis weekly Vita.mn last week. You can read that story here.

There are a couple more photos after the jump. Thanks to Katie T. for the use of her camera.