Kevin Devine announces nationwide tour + shares new single "How Can I Help You?" today

For immediate release:

February 11th, 2022

KEVIN DEVINE

ANNOUNCES SPRING 2022 U.S. TOUR IS ON SALE TODAY

AND SHARES SECOND SINGLE

FROM FORTHCOMING 10TH FULL-LENGTH ALBUM

NOTHING'S REAL SO NOTHING'S WRONG

DUE OUT MARCH 25

PRE-ORDER THE ALBUM HERE

NEW SINGLE

"HOW CAN I HELP YOU?"

IS OUT TODAY

LISTEN HERE | WATCH VISUALIZER HERE

GENERAL TICKET SALE BEGINS TODAY

AT 12PM LOCAL TIME

GET TICKETS HERE

Download hi-res tour graphic

Today, New York-based songwriter and musician Kevin Devine has revealed he will be hitting the road this Spring of 2022 and touring across the U.S. in support of his expansive, forthcoming tenth full-length album, Nothing's Real, So Nothing's Wrong, due out March 25, 2022 via Triple Crown Records, and available for pre-order now. Devine will be joined by exciting up-and-comers, Pronoun, Kississippi and Kayleigh Goldsworthy. Tickets are on-sale now and can be purchased on kevindevine.net.

Along with the announcement of the tour, today, Devine shares the album's second single, "How Can I Help You?" –a thoughtful, drum-backed track, where Devine sensitively asks throughout, "How can I help you push through yourself to me? / How I can help you tell me what you need?" The track closes with this same soft, loving energy as Devine fondly declares, "When I see you gates unguarded / Aphrodite / evidence of God, I’m free inside." Gently knocking at the door of a heart's gilded cage, Devine knows what's possible with the key unlocked; he's been inside the castle of love, covered in roses and liberated -- enlightenment that was fleeting and yet everlasting.

Describing the new single, Devine explains "How Can I Help You?" "is a dance song for wallflowers, body music for the brain, a gently caffeinated disco gallop arpeggiating through the last aspirational sliver separating a relationship from its end."

The album's lead single, "Albatross," was a powerful introduction to the new record. Devine describes the song as "a hard reboot, a fragmented emptying-out for us strugglers whose life experience invalidates cookie-cutter solutions or miracle cures or 21st century coping mechanisms." BrooklynVegan calls it, "gorgeous, breezy, woodwind-synth-infused indie rock," while Stereogum lauds it as a "cinematically expansive track that builds to a plucked-out breakdown where Devine hits on the album’s title."

The new songs will soon be able to experienced live, and The Nothing's Real So Nothing's Wrong Spring 2022 tour officially kicks off on April 6th in Baltimore, MD and will travel throughout the East Coast and Midwest before going South and West. The tour will conclude back in the Southeast on May 21st in Carrboro, NC.

Devine's career began in the early 2000s with the band Miracle Of 86. From there he struck out on his own, performing solo and with his ever-evolving backing collective, The Goddamn Band, eventually forming Bad Books with Manchester Orchestra. In 2015, Devine started his Devinyl Splits 7" series with Craig Finn, Matthew Caws (Nada Surf), David Bazan, The Front Bottoms, Meredith Graves (Perfect Pussy) and many more. In addition to playing as a solo artist, Devine has served as a touring member of several bands, and performed extensively and internationally with a range of other artists such as Frightened Rabbit, John K Samson and Julien Baker, amassing a loyal, fervent following along the way.

The latest from Kevin Devine -- "Albatross" and "How Can I Help You?" -- are out everywhere now, and be sure to catch the live tour as he travels across the U.S. this Spring. Find a full list of dates below.

Kevin Devine's latest full-length album, Nothing's Real, So Nothing's Wrong, is out March 25th, 2022 via Triple Crown Records and you can pre-order it here.

Photo Credit: Erik Tanner | Download hi-res

Kevin Devine Tour Dates

Spring 2022

With Kayleigh Goldsworthy

Wednesday, April 6th - Baltimore, MD - Ottobar *

Thursday, April 7th - Cleveland, OH - Mahall's *

Friday, April 8th - Buffalo, NY - Mohawk *

Saturday, April 9th - Toronto, ON - Velvet *

Sunday, April 10th - Detroit, MI - Shelter *

Tuesday, April 12th - Minneapolis, MN - 7th Street Entry *

Wednesday, April 13th - Chicago, IL - Lincoln Hall *

Friday, April 15th - Brooklyn, NY - Music Hall of Williamsburg *

Saturday, April 16th - Boston, MA - Sinclair*

Friday, April 29th - Philadelphia, PA - FU Church !

Saturday, April 30th - Columbus, OH - A&R Music Bar !

Sunday, May 1st - Nashville, TN - Mercury Lounge !

Tuesday, May 3rd - Dallas, TX - Tulips !

Wednesday, May 4th - Austin, TX - Antone's !

Friday, May 6th - Phoenix, AZ - Crescent Ballroom !

Saturday, May 7th - Los Angeles, CA - The Roxy !

Sunday, May 8th - San Diego, CA - Soda Bar !

Monday, May 9th - San Francisco,CA - Great American !

Wednesday, May 11th - Portland, OR - Doug Fir !

Thursday, May 12th - Seattle, WA - Chop Suey !

Saturday, May 14th - Salt Lake City, UT - Kilby !

Sunday, May 15th - Denver, CO - Bluebird !

Tuesday, May 17th - St. Louis, MO - Off Broadway !

Thursday, May 19th - Orlando, FL - Soundbar !

Friday, May 20th - Atlanta, GA - The Masquerade !

* Dates with Pronoun

! Dates with Kississippi

Kevin Devine Bio

In the very first line of her 1959 novel The Haunting Of Hill House, the late author Shirley Jackson writes, “No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality.” That conviction is shared by musician Kevin Devine on his upcoming 10th LP Nothing’s Real, So Nothing’s Wrong, a beautiful, surreal, cinematic bedroom-rock fever dream. Its title, hewn from the chant-sung chorus of lead single “Albatross,” nods to this. In the face of incomprehensibly desperate struggles, a new spiritual paradigm is a necessity: “If you’re sinking, sing along/Nothing’s real, so nothing’s wrong,” sings Devine.

Like Jackson’s observation, it’s not an encouragement of retreat; it’s an inward solution in the name of preservation, a personal reorientation toward struggle in a collapsing landscape riddled with failed systems and vacant coping mechanisms that breed malignant internalizations.

“Part of what’s so scary about all of this stuff happening outside of us is so much of it feels so surreal and cynical,” says Devine. “We’ve invested in a version of reality that is almost so perverse that it can’t be real. Trying to find a solution to that almost involved seeing the thing as it is and invalidating it to yourself: it’s not that I’m poor, it’s that capitalism is fucking broken and rapacious. It’s not that I’m not a real man, it’s that masculinity is broken. It’s not that I’m not strong because I’m not violent, it’s that militarism has infected everything we look at.”

This is the central thesis linking the record’s 11 tracks, which drift between orchestral acoustic indie, lo-fi psych-folk, and melodic guitar pop. “They’re all excavating a particular brand of how to operate in a crisis, spiritual and familial and cultural,” explains Devine. “Rather than a spiritual bypass that tells me I’m being taken care of by some invisible architect, it’s like, ‘Everything is exactly as it is and a lot of what I invest in actually isn’t real and doesn’t need to be invested in.’ Nothing’s Real, So Nothing’s Wrong might be a little pithy, but how do I get through today? Sometimes that’s the best answer.

“I see it as a kind of stepping outside and taking some sort of virtual scalpel and carving a safe space for yourself, not to exist in denial but in a kind of re-enfranchised opposition.”

Devine wrote most of the record’s songs between January 2019 and March 2020, working remotely with collaborator Chris Bracco. Drums for the record were cut in studio, but otherwise Devine and Bracco recorded in their homes, with Devine using a four-channel mixer to record guitars. With no strict timelines, the duo explored and applied extra-tonal structural features, experimenting with different synths, sub-bass frequencies, sound effects, and found sound, like bird songs or street proselytizers or Devine’s daughter recounting a dream she had.

While releases like 2016’s Instigator embraced what Devine describes as vertical expressions of dynamics, like the “spiky, power-pop, loud-quiet, Nirvana-Pixies thing,” this collection expresses itself theatrically, in broad, horizontal textures and palettes. Devine and Bracco were influenced in particular by the Flaming Lips’ Soft Bulletin. “Flaming Lips were like, ‘What if we made sweet Beatles songs then made them as fucked up as possible?’” says Devine. “There’s a little bit of that spirit that animates this too.”

Sequenced and designed to be listened to from start to end, the record shudders awake on “Laurel Leaf (Anhedonia)” with a whoosh of found sound as Devine’s daughter’s voice enters, couched on eerie synths before a mechanical Elliott Smith guitar riff spirals listeners down a sonic and thematic rabbit hole. Follow-up “Override” snaps up the torch and continues with a charged, gothic, synth-and-guitar gymnastic routine that eventually collapses into a strings-led bridge, then reignites for a raucous finish. “How Can I Help You” begins with ricocheting synth before thumping into a spirited, upbeat rumble and a joyous chorus complete with chiming bell tones.

“Albatross” picks up these cues with crackling vocals before a wall of guitars, bass, drums, and woodwind synths waltzes straight up to the quiet, hymnal bridge: “Nothing ventured, nothing gained/Nothing matters anyway/If you’re frightened, stay awake/Pick a god and start to pray.” Eventually the instruments explode back in, sweeping up Devine’s titular creed-chanting in a maelstrom outro. On Side B, “It’s A Trap!” is pure, melody-forward bedroom-power-pop bliss that shifts gears effortlessly, and moody country-noir riffing leads “Tried To Fall In Love (My Head Got In The Way)” into a delirious, harmony-laden ‘70s rock daydream. The record closes quietly on “Stitching Up The Suture,” a contemplative come-down resolving in a whoosh that bleeds right back into the first track.

Nothing’s Real, So Nothing’s Wrong is a tactical reengagement with the world, an ad-hoc spiritual system to preserve one’s self while dancing between the gnashing, blood-stained gears of capitalism. The cultivation of this system is important: the self is one of the few spaces where we can truly resist. “You can try to take everything external from me, but you’re not gonna be allowed to take the space between my ears and in my chest,” says Devine. “That’s the space that actually animates how I will move around in the world. And I still have to be in the world every day.”