COLONY PRESENTS:
KEVIN DEVINE w/ special guests
LAURA STEVENSON +
GUILT MOUNTAIN
FRIDAY 2.16.18
$15 ADV / $18 DOS
DOORS: 7PM / SHOW: 8PM
BUY ADV TIX HERE: http://colonywoodstock.ticketfly.com/
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KEVIN DEVINE
(https://www.KEVINDEVINE.net/)
KEVIN DEVINE is used to living life in the gray. For the past 14 years, the Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter has oscillated between As and Bs: intimate acoustic moments and bombastic rock songs; deeply introspective lyrics and sociopolitical charges; the storm cloud and its silver lining.
Produced by John Agnello (Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr.) and released via Brand New’s Procrastinate! Music Traitors label, INSTIGATOR is Devine’s ninth full-length album and comes on the heels of a busy few years: In addition to recording two albums with Bad Books (the indie-rock supergroup he formed with members of Manchester Orchestra), he released the Kickstarter-funded double-album collection BUBBLEGUM and BULLDOZER in 2013 along with the wildly ambitious 2015 DEVINYL SPLITS 7” series with the likes of Brand New’s Jesse Lacey, Perfect Pussy’s Meredith Graves and Nada Surf’s Matthew Caws.
Devine is a master storyteller, and he imbues Instigator – from the biting power-pop of “Both Ways” and “No Why” to the angular, Nirvana-esque “Guard Your Gates” & gorgeously finger-picked “No One Says You Have To” – with intricate details and often-uncomfortable truths. Their meanings are personal, but their themes are universal. It’s a skill that makes both his albums and his live show so alluring: Even when Devine’s writing about the world at large, he’s pointing a mirror back at himself.
That sensibility is present on “Freddie Gray Blues,” a harrowing portrait of the events surrounding the 2015 death of Freddie Gray at the hands of Baltimore police officers. Over haunting acoustic-based talking blues, Devine pays tribute to Gray before digging deep into his own past to reconcile both his privilege and social status as the son, grandson and nephew of NYPD officers. “I don’t think there’s a way for a person in my position to sing that song credibly without talking about why I’m in the room,” he says.
And it’s there on “No History,” a string of personal vignettes centered on the September 11, 2001 attacks. It’s a song made much more meaningful by both the din of the 2016 presidential election and current global climate—a cautionary tale that one moment in time has wildly lasting repercussions.
When Devine’s past lives meet his present-day self on the career-defining “I Was Alive Back Then,” the beautiful duality of his art takes center stage: Life is never all peril or perfection, a country ripped apart by war and social injustice or the joy of holding your child for the first time. The extremes might be easier to define, but it’s in the middle where life really happens.
“That’s how I write records,” he continues. “You want to write about real shit. It’s really trying to communicate what I think it’s like to be me—even though I don’t know that all the time—and in the process help people touch a little closer what it’s like to be them, too.”
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LAURA STEVENSON
(laurastevenson.net)
Laura Stevenson is finally learning not to worry. After more than a year of national and worldwide touring following the release of her critically acclaimed album Wheel, both headlining, and alongside such varied acts as Against Me!, The Go-Go’s, Kevin Devine, Tim Kasher of Cursive, and The Gaslight Anthem, the songwriter made the move from her between-tour home base of Brooklyn, to upstate New York’s Hudson River Valley. There, she rented a nineteenth- century Victorian, a former brothel in a cement-mining town-turned hippie-enclave, and converted the attic into a makeshift studio. It was in this space that she and her band went to work arranging and demoing the eleven songs she had written that would make up Cocksure, Stevenson’s fourth album. The record features musicians Mike Campbell, Alex Billig and Peter Naddeo, who in various incarnations have performed with her for over seven years, as well as newcomer Samantha Niss, a long-time Hudson Valley resident and the veritable go-to drummer of the region.
Where 2013’s Wheel was full of lingering uncertainty, harkening to Stevenson’s folk and country leanings, Cocksure is a straightforward, to the point, emboldened rock and roll album. Although some existential dread still peaks through the cracks, Stevenson treats themes as heavy-hearted as sudden and tragic death, self-imposed exile in small windowless rooms, and that back-of-your- mind anxiety that the road you’re on may not be the right one, as their own signs of life; a life that is brightly colored by those realities.
With influences ranging from The Lemonheads, Liz Phair, and The Replacements, to early Weezer and the Smoking Popes, Cocksure maintains Stevenson’s unique vulnerability, and steadfast devotion to a solid and honest melody. In the writing process, she challenged herself to be true to whatever was going to come out of her, with many of the tracks featuring melodies that were purely stream of consciousness. “I felt like over-working it would suck some of the spirit out of the songs… this record needed that spontaneity. Spending so much time editing and second guessing yourself takes all the life out of it.”
This sense of spontaneity was maintained in the way Cocksure was recorded. In May of 2015, Stevenson and her band traveled city-bound to Room 17, a studio located in her old neighborhood of Bushwick, Brooklyn. “It’s this very positive and amazing space, and Joe Rogers, the engineer, was so enthusiastic about what we were doing. Everyone was comfortable enough to just really play and not get caught up in anything else.” All the main instrumentation on Cocksure was performed live, no clicks/no punches, under the watchful eyes of Rogers and producer Jeff Rosenstock, Stevenson’s long-time friend and collaborator. “Jeff was the perfect person for the job. All of his Bomb The Music Industry! and solo recordings have this energy to them, they’re like living things. I wanted to capture some of the magic he has.” The album was later mixed and mastered by Jack Shirley (Joyce Manor, Deafheaven, Tony Molina) at Atomic Garden Studios in Palo Alto, CA.
Self-assurance is a new hat for Stevenson, and on Cocksure she confronts her usual tendencies toward self-deprecation head-on. “It’s freeing to stop being so hard on yourself, and to quiet down all of the outside noise,” she says. “Once you’re able to do that, you can actually write what you should be writing.”
GUILT MOUNTAIN
(https://guiltmountain.bandcamp.com)’
Guilt Mountain started as the bedroom recording experiment of Hudson Valley Scorpio Kate Larson, who wanted to prove to herself that she could create an album completely on her own. Having played various instruments in bands for years, she wondered what it could be like to go at it alone, accepting the personal dare and recording Tiger Hour in 2013. Recorded entirely with inherited and literally found-in-the-trash USB microphones, it was a slapdash lesson in basic home recording and songwriting, including maybe the hardest lesson of them all: that you should always record your drum tracks first. She recorded another collection of songs, Hey Witch in 2014, and started playing shows, accompanied sometimes by her friend Matt Ross on drums, and always by her arcade-won light-up toy power wand. At first she thought all this would satisfy her curiosity, but discovered she just wanted to keep digging.
For Rare Energy, she recorded with Christopher Daly of Salvation Recording Co. in New Paltz, New York, this time with Matt on drums and collaborator and friend Sarah Ayton on bass. The songs peak and dip, going from the tonal and burying distortion of “Fever” to the gentle and coasting clarity of “Slowing,” but always maintaining an honest wonder and forward stride. There’s a new focus in the songs, stemming from many hands invested in guiding them to their means. Kate learns to trust herself within them, leaving behind the manic dare of creating music alone, and entering into a brighter realm of examination and certainty.
A lifelong maker of personal zines, Kate is no stranger to sharing personal narratives, with her lyrics always landing in the realm of the confessional and autobiographical. The songs speak to her experiences, touching on topics of identity politics and queerness, chronic illness, abuse, and community support, as well as the usual suspects: love, anxiety, and just plain feeling like garbage. On “Rare Energy,” she stares down her own destructive patterns, laments personal and familial illness, examines her queerness, and volleys between what’s soft and what’s solid in a way that’s truly human, and sometimes jarring.
A project that started with a true beginner’s mind, Guilt Mountain has morphed and grown around itself over the years, branching outwards still.
