Kevin Devine shares new single, "Override," today from forthcoming, tenth album out March 25

For immediate release:

March 10th, 2022

KEVIN DEVINE

SHARES THIRD 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

"OVERRIDE"

IS OUT TODAY

LISTEN HERE | WATCH VISUALIZER HERE

TICKETS TO THE SPRING 2022 U.S TOUR

ARE ON SALE NOW

GET TICKETS HERE

CELEBRATE THE ALBUM RELEASE WITH

A LIVE ACOUSTIC SET + SIGNING WITH KEVIN

AT LOONEY TUNES RECORD STORE IN LONG ISLAND

ON MARCH 24TH

GET TICKETS TO THE RELEASE SHOW

WITH THE PURCHASE OF THE VINYL HERE

Painting Credit: Valerie Hegarty | Download hi-res LP artwork

Today, New York-based songwriter and musician Kevin Devine shares the third single, "Override" from his forthcoming album, Nothing's Real, So Nothing's Wrong due out March 25, 2022 and available for pre-order now via Triple Crown Records. Plus, Kevin Devine will head out on tour across the U.S. this Spring with support from Pronoun, Kississippi and Kayleigh Goldsworthy. Tickets are on-sale now and can be purchased on kevindevine.net.

Additionally, ahead of the release of Nothing's Real, So Nothing's Wrong, Devine will be performing an intimate, stripped down acoustic set at Looney Tunes Record Store in Long Island, NY on March 24th. Fans can gain access to the set, which includes an autograph and photo op, with the purchase of the vinyl from the Looney Tunes store. Celebrate the release of Devine's most realized, expansive work yet with Kevin himself. Find tickets and more information here.

The highly anticipated LP's third single, "Override" is an attempt to stay grounded in reality, to not be consumed by thoughts and turbulent surroundings, as Devine repeats in the chorus, "I need an override," pleading to stay afloat, and not be swallowed whole, as the track bounces between chaos and order. The multi-layered verses come in and out, almost in a whisper, as Devine utters, "Detach your shadow / “Go Fish!” your tarot / Fling your unnameable fate at a crease in the wall / Trace your timeline to the moment you flinched / And gently suggest that you don’t let it happen again."

The override itself is brilliantly communicated sonically as synthesizers and the toll of a bell swell together to become overwhelming, just before the verses come in as a slow moment of peace, a sigh of relief. The track then returns to the emotional tumult, only this time, more refined, refreshed and with a firmer grasp on reality.

Explaining the track, Devine says, "'Override' is songs within a song, unpacking the kitchen sink in search of when you flinched, and how not to now, when you last felt safe, and how to get back there, and where the boundaries are, and what a boundary is, and where did I hide the reset key, and can I write my own mantra, and how do I get rooted while the earth moves all around me."

The album's gentle second single, "How Can I Help You?" finds a sensitive, thoughtful Devine in one of the LP's more synth-pop moments, one that BrooklynVegan calls "very cool," and while a slight departure from his usual sound, "unmistakably Kevin Devine."

The track's official release was closely followed by a stripped back, acoustic version available to watch here. The acoustic version premiered with The FADER, who wrote, "On the acoustic version, Devine is able to key into the softness at the heart of the song, adding to the empathetic nature that defines his work across all avenues. It's a tender embrace in a world that so often feels cold and uninterested in helping others."

The new songs and all time fan favorites can be heard live this Spring across the U.S. in support of Devine's multidimensional tenth full-length album.

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.

All three brand new singles from Kevin Devine, "Override," "Albatross" and "How Can I Help You?," are out everywhere now, and ahead of the tour and album release, catch an exclusive, acoustic set and signing at Looney Tunes Record Store in Long Island, NY on March 24th. Don't miss 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

Thursday, March 24th - Long Island, NY - Looney Tunes Record Store ^

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

^ Acoustic set + signing

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.”