Kevin Devine

Posted by Tim Karan on 24-Jan-07 @ 11:29 AM

HQ: Brooklyn, NY

NOW PLAYING: Put Your Ghost To Rest (CAPITOL)

THE STORY SO FAR: In music, is there anything less original than a dude with an acoustic guitar? Hardly. But because these dudes are everywhere, the really good ones stick out: Like Kevin Devine, who would wipe the floor with the earnest singer-songwriters caterwauling at open-mic nights, because he knows the clichés that litter his path like landmines. "I have always bristled at what the traditional notion of a singer-songwriter is," Devine says, who first earned his stripes as the frontman of the now-defunct early emo band, Miracle Of 86. "I think that what a [it] has become is this really sophomoric and bland emotionalism. The singer-songwriters that I gravitated towards in my musical upbringing, they were guys like Bob Dylan and Elliott Smith, and they were people who there was more than one shade to what they were trying to express." Devine began exploring the acoustic spectrum with 2002's Circle Gets The Square, before Miracle Of 86 formally broke up, but branched out even more on subsequent albums like Make The Clocks Move (2003) and Split The Country, Split The Street (2005), where Devine both embraced and resisted the singer-songwriter formula by becoming more dynamic and textured. The tuneful songs covered the gamut of topics-including relationships, alcohol and politics-but with Devine's signature self-effacement and weary vulnerability. On Put Your Ghost To Rest-Devine's major-label debut along with his group of back-up musicians affectionately-titled The Goddamn Band-the Brooklyn troubadour follows the path laid by his predecessors and goes even further by joining up with producer Rob Schnapf (Elliott Smith, Beck). There are quiet songs ("A Billion Bees"), hard rockers ("Like Cursing Kids"), alt-country interludes ("Less Yesterday, More Today"), and the many sounds in-between. "I really do feel a little less self-conscious," Devine admits. "I write about my life and about how I see life in this society, on this planet, through a very singular set of eyes, and that's all I can do. I'm not so self-conscious about who I'm going to get compared to. It's like, 'Who gives a fuck? Just write stuff and shut up.'"

WHY YOU SHOULD KNOW HIM:The former Miracle Of 86 frontman takes his punk roots into more acoustic territory, but makes the singer-songwriter style sound fresh. --Kyle Ryan

YOU LIKE? YOU'LL LIKE: Elliott Smith/ Bright Eyes / Eric Bachmann