Kevin Devine and others play Gowanus venue “The Bell House”
by Hannah Zeitner, staff reporter
Kevin Devine and guests such as Laura Stevenson, Meredith Graves, Cymbals Eat Guitars, Matthew Caws and Tigers Jaw played the Gowanus venue “The Bell House” located at 149 7th ST, Brooklyn, NY. This show was the first of three shows for Kevin Devine’s DeVinyl Splits series.
The first guest that performed was Laura Stevenson. Stevenson is a singer/songwriter from Long Island and former keyboardist of the band “Bomb The Music Industry!” She performed her set solo and covered Elliott Smith’s “Angel In The Snow.”
Up next came Brianna Collins, one half of Tigers Jaw, who sung harmonies on one of Kevin Devine’s songs entitled “For Eugene.” After that, her band mate Ben Walsh joined and the two of them performed “Teen Rocket” and “I Saw Water” acoustically. Shortly after that, Kevin Devine & the Goddamn Band came on as their backing band and performed a cover of The Cure’s “Inbetween Days” and a version of Tigers Jaw’s “Cool.”
After Brianna and Ben left the stage, Kevin Devine performed a cover of The Cure’s “Lovesong.”
After a short intermission, the band Cymbals Eat Guitars came onto the stage and performed their song “Aerobed” off their split with Devine, and two songs off their record “LOSE.” Singer Joe D’agostino made more appearances on stage after their set was over.
Up next came another Kevin Devine set, where he proceeded to talk about how great Mike Kinsella is and how they toured together with Andy Hull in 2007. At this point, Devine didn’t know that Kinsella was backstage listening to this story. After his set and story was finished, Meredith Graves took the stage.
Meredith Graves is from the band “Perfect P-word” and is known for her energetic stage performances and how her music was composed of short blasts of noise punk. Now with her solo song off her split with Devine, her music has more of a shoegazey feel. She belted out her solo song, “Took The Ghost To The Movies,” while Kevin Devine & the Goddamn Band and Joe D’agostino backed her.
Meredith and Joe left, leaving KD&GDB who eventually brought out Devine’s wife Carey Brandenburg to sing “Lonesome Town,” and then Nada Surf front man Matthew Caws to duet with him on the song “Brooklyn Boy.” Caws then did Nada Surf’s “Blizzard of ‘77” solo and played his cover of Devine’s “Fiscal Cliff” (that he recorded for their split). Caws wrapped up with Nada Surf’s “Inside of Love” and “See These Bones” where Devine joined him again.
Towards the end the show, Kevin Devine & the Goddamn Band played another set. They played a ton of Devine fan favorites over the course of the night — “Ballgame,” “Cotton Crush,” “Brother’s Blood” and more– and also played a good amount of songs off of his newest album, “Matter of Time.”
“Even though I only went to the show mainly to see Tigers Jaw, I think all of the other artists did such a great job performing. I especially liked Meredith Graves’ set and surprisingly most of Kevin Devine’s songs. It was a pretty good concert all in all,” junior Elizabeth Browne said.
The show was fantastic and all the guests that played along Kevin Devine made the night very worthwhile. Every person that went on and performed did a great job and played their songs the best they could.
The DeVinyl Splits show continued in Philadelphia (12/12) with Jesse Lacey from Brand New replacing Laura Stevenson , then in Cambridge (12/13) with Brian Sella from the Front Bottoms. Cymbals Eat Guitars and Laura Stevenson played Brooklyn together again on Monday (12/14).