Constance All Grown Up, by Rhode Island resident Devon Mello, is the latest release by the folks at Drunk With Love Records (who preciously brought you the epic 100-song mega-album by Gay Angel). Mello makes lo-fi guitar and piano songs that are direct and impassioned and reassuringly DIY, coming off as what Drunk With Love describe as “preaching like a deranged Randy Newman at a mass”.
The album opens with the lines “reach into yesterday kissing sun sick eyes returning to blood stained teeth”, a sentence who’s meaning isn’t immediately clear, but boy does it set the scene. The accompanying instrumentation is slow and sad and a sign of things to come. Next up is ‘olde english’ a piano based love song (or in fact quite the opposite):
“I’ll call you when I grow my hair
We’ll both match at the shoulders
I hope you find someone for you
Just know I want you too”
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The lyrics on ‘charlie charlie charlie’ are dark and sardonic, with lines such as “My new mother says that she loves me / she hopes to forget me hanging from a tree” and the closing refrain of “mother don’t cry”. ‘haunt” has drum machine and lyrics which bring to mind Casiotone For the Painfully Alone (although a little more downbeat, which is some feat), while ‘pink boy smooth woman’ tells the tale of the titular Constance and her anarchic (and satanic) nihilistic tendencies (“now she says god is dead / I should be with her instead”). Things come to a close with ‘VCR reunion’ sounds more sedate, with a pretty piano melody, but even here the lyrics are night-black.
“Isabel talked about that girl who hanged herself from oak trees
from her blonde curls
imagine my surprise if i glanced out my window to see her neck snap
some trees don’t stand long
but this was stronger then that”
You can get Constance All Grown Up from December the 15th on Drunk With Love Records. Also be sure to check out the Devon Mello Bandcamp page for previous releases.