About this Event

Future Perfect presents

Devon Sproule

Plus Beware This Boy

The Cellar - Oxford

Friday 24th March

16+ / 7pm / £10adv



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Devon Sproule is a Canadian/American musician living in rural Virginia, raised on eco-villages near Kingston, Ontario and Louisa, Virginia. The 34-year-old, in addition to being a musician, is a high school drop-out, a birder, doula, and a student of Deaf Culture and sign language. She has been married to producer Paul Curreri for 11 years. 'The Gold String' by Devon Sproule will be released on Tin Angel Records in spring 2017.

I’m imagining a golden string that is connecting

everything but especially, beings where love has been.

I’ve imagined it again and again so often,

it isn’t even imagining, it is making it happen.



“I was staying in a tiny house all by myself, on a windy island out in the North sea. My daily human contact was waving to a farmer while he trained his 9-month-old sheepdog, Jan, for a herding competition. I had a little map of the ruins in the area, but I never really felt like it. I was gravitating toward the more modest plants and birds, considering all the people in my life. Everything seemed hyper-connected. So I postponed dinner — which is always easy because I can’t cook — & begin to write these long, long lines of lyrics. They were way less labored than usual, less chiseled into a meter. But I found that if I narrowed the melody to a few notes — almost like a chant — the ideas began to string themselves together. That song became ‘The Gold String.’



Devon Sproule’s “Gold String” is North American music with weirdo roots. Recorded in three different Canadian provinces — Yukon, Ontario, and Nova Scotia — the short, lush LP features backing from Toronto dream-poppers Bernice. The deep, sparse “Drawing Circles” is a song by Sproule’s Tin Angel labelmate Ed Askew. Two songs are co-written with Mike O’Neill (Inbreds) and mixed by Sandro Perri. Sproule’s husband Paul Curreri sings, plays, mixes, and produces.



"'More Together' is half-about reconciliation — no doubt about it. But it’s also about the relief you feel when you stop needing to set yourself apart in the world. When we lived in Austin, we got this crazy cheap gym membership thanks to a friend’s Costco card. Sometimes on the elliptical, I’d peek at the other folks around me. We were all so sweaty, leaning forward, our music in our headphones, just working. I was surprised how happy I was to be a part of the tribe. So I wrote that into the second verse, along with an image of the sweat lodge we had at Twin Oaks when I was growing up.”



"Sproule's lyrics glance off each other arrestingly, juxtaposing images." (Financial Times). "Her quirky affectations bring to mind Bjork, and forays into the dark, Michelle Shocked." (Village Voice)



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On sale now: http://bit.ly/DevonSprouleOxford