Devours - Sports Car Era
Surviving the Game
Released on March 15th, 2025
You wake up the day after your 40th birthday, the hangover is worse than it’s ever been, and there’s a crook in your neck that’ll keep you from looking to your left for at least a few days. It hurts to reach towards the end table, but the strain is worth the Advil. You stumble downstairs, shuffle some empties into the bin, freeing up some counterpace to make a coffee. A can falls from the counter, hitting the ground with an ear-splitting clink against the tile. Before you know it, you’re dialing up the local Chevy dealer, asking about the new Corvettes on the lot. You’ve entered your Sports Car Era.
For his fifth album, Jeff Cancade, better known as Devours, tackles the male midlife crisis with his usual dreamy hyper-pop charm drenched in self-deprecating wit. "Sports Car Era is a nod to the male midlife crisis. I turned 40 a few months ago, and my life feels like a chaotic, unpredictable mess.” The long-suffering DIY artist found himself at the confluence of existential dread and self-empowerment and turned it into a record that is both liberating and discouraging in equal measure.
Sonically, SCE doesn’t do much that other Devours LPs haven’t, but Cancade continues to get better and better at what he does. A veritable hyper-pop pioneer, he is one of the few that could consider themselves a veteran in the burgeoning scene. In between his typical strobing, stochastic glitches are warm swells of synth that accompany haunting dirges. “November” and “Pirouette” stand out as particularly memorable laments that intersect the more liberating refrains that surround them. There are some very strong hooks throughout the album, but “Loudmouth” is one of the catchiest tunes I’ve heard in quite some time. Huge synth squalls and warm distorted guitars buoy an anthemic plea:
“I’m living untucked and I need help
I wanna get fucked in a tree house
I never speak up, you’re a loudmouth”
SCE certainly comes straight from planet Devours, but it represents a shifting identity. Instead of trying to find his place in the music scene or the gay community as he has done on past albums, Cancade simply accepts where he has found himself at the middle of his life, regardless if that’s where he intended to be. The sharp barbs pointed directly at himself serve as sort of a tongue-in-cheek ego death, simultaneously self-deprecating and celebratory. Devours has always been far outside the box, but it wasn’t until his Sports Car Era that he was ready to fully embrace it.
