Yes, U (Bonus Track Version)

Australia’s Devastations relocated to Europe, and set up shop in Berlin, where their ominous, brooding sound finds a geographical anchor. Though this trio have been likened to their fellow countryman Nick Cave, it’s more that they share similar influences. Both intuitively understand the somber, flat drama of Leonard Cohen and Lee Hazlewood (“The Face of Love” recalls Cohen’s “Joan of Arc”), but where Cave staked a claim on Biblical wrath, sin and damnation, Devastations recoil and reflect with moody, imagistic, vaguely danceable numbers that combine the spiritual solemnity and disturbing stillness of Talk Talk with the orchestrated excitement of the Tindersticks. Album number three, 2008’s Yes, U, is thick with stationary keyboards and hazy vocals that could be the soundtrack for a movie hurling towards the end of the world. “Black Ice” opens with a sultry, smooth nightclub groove, bass-heavy and caught in mirrors of reverb before turning on the feedback for the seven-minute epic, “Oh Me, Oh My” where a multitude of sound effects accompany the even more ghostly vocals. “The Pest” quiets to an eerie whisper. Simultaneously soothing and disquieting.