I very nearly went to the shows these songs were recorded at, but I didn't. What a thoroughly lame sentence. Years in the future, my children will be looking through my record collection and the best I'll be able to say about this one is "oh yeah, I nearly went to that, but didn't". My laziness knows no bounds.
Kevin Devine played three nights in St. Pancras Old Church in London, playing songs from his first four albums the first night, second four albums the next and then requests on third. It's a very cool idea and, I imagine, an incredible venue to see him play in. There are a bunch of reasons why I didn't get round to buying tickets or going, and here are the ones I can recall:
- To be honest, I was a bit torn about which night to go on. I know the second four albums better, but that's because I got into his music just after Brother's Blood came out. But that also means I've heard those songs live a bunch, so maybe the first night would have been better? Or go rogue and go to the third? I live in Oxford and going to London more than one night in a row is a pain. My indecision resulted in me going to none of them.
- The August beforehand I saw Kevin Devine play in the All Saints Church in Kingston and it was awesome. I saw a few shows Banquet put on there and each was amazing. So not only had I seen Kevin recently play in a church, it was one I knew and liked (although possibly a less grand church? I've not been to St. Pancras Old Church so I can't say for sure). That show was incredible - Tellison supported and when Kevin asked for requests "Every Famous Last Word" came out of my mouth before I knew it; Kevin played it straight away and I smiled like a loon. It was a great moment. Perhaps I was worried these shows wouldn't live up to my expectations or memories.
- I'm just incredibly lazy. This is a recurring theme and if I checked how often that's come up in these blog posts I'd be horrified I'm sure. Probably not horrified enough to do anything about it though.
But, luckily, Big Scary Monsters put out an album from the shows, so I got to enjoy the audio at least. As an added bonus, they included another 17 songs as mp3s so we could all enjoy even more of the nights. It must have been hard to cut the highlights from so many great songs, so it's nice that we can still hear the others - some of my favourite songs didn't make the LP but are included there (Cotton Crush, Private First Class and She Stayed as Steam in particular).
As I mentioned above, I have so much time for the song Every Famous Last Word (and the album, for that matter) and the version here is great - appropriately slower and still excellent. It's a great example of the perfect use he makes of the echo in the building, although not quite as much as Brother's Blood - a song surely made for stepping away from the microphone and screaming into the air. Needless to say, the version of that song here is incredible. I used to watch the video of him singing it in Banquet Records on YouTube whenever I couldn't think what to watch; I now play this version.
A fair amount of chat between songs is included which adds a lot of flavour to them - the dangers of condemning war in Texas on No Time Flat and stories about his somewhat chequered past on Not Over You Yet and a couple of others in the mp3s. I'm a big fan of the artwork here too - simple representations of his eight albums, but choosing to represent them by their titles rather than the original artwork. It's a nice idea and luckily his album titles are quite distinctive, so it makes for a cool idea.
It goes without saying that anyone thinking about getting into Kevin's music would be wise to start here. Not only is this a great selection of songs (whilst still leaving plenty of highlights for further digging) it shows them in a spectacular setting and style.
I really should have gone to these shows.
Format: 12", picture sleeve
Tracks: 13
Cost: £14 new
Bought: Big Scary Monsters website
When: 07/03/16
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code
