“My name’s Devin…y’ever heard of me?”
Hailing from Brooklyn, New York, the seemingly self-deprecataing Devin (last name Therriault) specialises in underproduced, catchy Fifties style rock-and-roll, and his show on Thursday night at Above Audio was a floor-shaking, foot-stamping, hip-shaking par for the course of which nothing else could be expected. But while the tracks were toe-tappingly infectious, the set list was limited by the underwhelming instrumental arrangement and the repetition that came part-and-parcel with it.
Devin’s voice sits somewhere around the level of “Greased Lightning backing singer” in terms of pitch and tone, but this is no bad thing. Instead, his voice feels built for the accompaniment – the man himself on guitar, accompanied by bass and a simple drum setup – and the effect the sound creates as a whole is a slightly wonderful timewarp. The sound does what it needs to with no fuss or overproduced noise, and the shrill guitar played off well against the deep and pronounced basslines within the confined space of the venue.
Video Post
The setlist was largely lifted from debut album Romancing, and initially hinted at some enjoyable novelty. New Horrors combined steady verses with frantic choruses – the easy-going, swaying beat becoming a mash of guitar and shrieking without warning, breaking down into a guitar solo which gave him time to indulge in a little showmanship. The setlist carried on into breakthrough single You’re Mine, a collection of rapid drum rolls and energetic, persistent power chords which kept heads bopping and the packed venue moving as a singular unit, swaying back and forth, keeping the collective afloat.
As the performance rolled on, indications of the sound changing very little crept in. I’m Not a Fool sounded a little too much like New Horrors’ verses for comfort, despite subliminal bluesy harping – “What you want, I don’t got…and what I want, I ain’t never gonna get,” he croons with a hint of swagger – and whilst there’s sensible pop underpinnings to his sound, the issue with Devin is that it becomes too familiar after two or three songs.
Closing song Masochist was something of a forgiving breath of fresh air, red-raw and choppy, bopping to a mean-ass bassline and furiously spat vocals. Relentless, noisy and splashy between finger-bleeding guitar fretting and endless barrages of cymbals, it’s a bitter rampage through illict Manhattan backstreets and smoky Brooklyn bars.
In Masochist, Devin finds himself, as the sneering New York street punk in a three-piece suit, and in his element he has the ability to surprise, entertain and encourage spontaneous hip-shaking in a well-size crowd. But for every inspired trip he whips through Fifties rock-n-roll party aggression, there’s a glib and overly familiar stroll through extremely similar songs limited by the instrumentation on offer, if not his own creative juice.
7bitarcade - Archive 