Kevin Devine - Instigator (October 21, 2016) Album • Page 16

coolest thing about kevdev is how he obviously seems to be friends/highly respects a ton of small bands out there. always see him on twitter talking to other smaller bands i love, it's so super cool

 

hes a national treasure

 

I need to come back to this more

 

I hum the chorus of the title track at work all the time -- gets me through the day for sure

 

This is a great album, gotta come back to it more. Threw it on before bed and I love it

 

No history is a top 10 kd song, no?

 

yeah, that and I Was Alive Back Then are among his hardest hitting writing imo. The whole album is really strong in that department but those two in particular have some aspects that align them with earlier songs in his discography (like I Was Alive Back Then being almost a sequel to Ballgame for example)

 

Guard your gates is sort of a strange song but I like it

 

I was not upset at all with him still playing 7 or 8 songs off this when I saw him recently. It's fantastic.

 

The song writing is just as good on this album l as put your ghost and brothers blood, but those albums have superior production to this. Not sure what happened to the production on this but the drums get lost in the mix at times, and the volumes seem a bit all over the place.

 

i dunno. i feel like brothers blood is still the superior work. way more expansive and just leaps ahead of anything else he's put out imo. but this is a great record. it grew on me a lot. agree that the closer and no history are the best tracks.

 

Bubblegum wins for me pretty easily

 

Split The Country for me, and I don't think it's really close.

 

I think Ghost is my favorite

 

fact that theres no consensus pretty much speaks to the quality of his discog imo

 

^^True but also Brother's Blood

 

I go back and forth between BB and PYGTR. Bubblegum and BTCAC are next

 

Yeah, this is pretty easily my favorite because it combines aspects of Bubblegum with the highlights of his solo discography and feels most consistent out of all of his albums imo. Plus "Freddie Gray Blues," "Both Ways," "No One Says You Have To," "Guard Your Gates" and "I Was Alive Back Then" are all top tier K-Dev tracks

 

Personally feel like the production is fine. It's kinda fuzzy, somewhere in between Bubblegum and BTCC, but it definitely sounds like he's hearkening to the stuff he likes. Superchunk, Pavement as usual, etc. Not saying your wrong about the drums but either I feel like every moment that has to hit, hits.

ALSO all his albums are his best album except circle

 

I think there is one really early album I never heard

 

It's probably Circle Gets the Square, and it's easily my least favorite album of his. There's some growing pains there for sure

 

Yea that's the one, I think i listened to clips on iTunes years ago and decided I would never listen to it ha

 

If you're interested, he plays updated versions of some of those songs on the Live from St Pancras album and they sound waaay better but yeah if you don't listen to it you aren't really missing much

 

Yea I really like that live album

 

Bubblegum is solid favourite for me, it just rips start to finish. The songwriting is so tight and concise, I think it's his clearest 'statement' as an album.