Kevin Devine Julien Baker Orlando Pinegrove

SHOW OF THE YEAR: Kevine Devine + Julien Baker + Pinegrove! “The Instigator Tour” | The Social, Orlando, FL | November 4, 2016

by • August 10, 2016

Rainy Monday’s are usually marked by casual Facebook scrolling and breakfast at noon. Nothing really registers or stops me in particular. I’m not looking for anything. What’s that cliche saying about love? It finds you when you’re not looking…blah…blah..blah. Well, this found me and I’m numb. It doesn’t make sense. I ball up my ineffectual fists and release them; squeezing my fingers into a smallness, tighter, tighter, trying to gather some sort concentrated energy as a form of distraction. It cannot be real, yet, there it sits on my screen; the event of the century.

Kevine Devine and The Goddamn Band, Julien Baker, Pinegrove, Petal

Kevin Devine and The Goddamn Band, Julien Baker, Pinegrove, and Petal are coming to The Social for “The Instigator Tour.” I’m sorry….I don’t think I read that correctly because it seems to me the bill crescendos as I moved towards the bottom, an unusual phenomenon.

Phenomenon. The word breathes a certain magic into the world. It explores the idea of the unplanned, the unexplainable. It’s bred on the basis that some happenstances cannot be touched by science. Put your books down. Don’t bother trying to pick up a pencil. November 4, 2016 at The Social in Orlando, FL will be a day wrapped in phenomenal parameters.

GET TIX to KEVIN DEVINE + JULIEN BAKER + PINEGROVE in ORLANDO!

Kevin Devine would’ve been enough to hook me. He’s part Miracle of ‘86, (his first band), part solo project with The Goddamn Band, and half of Bad Books along with Manchester Orchestra’s Andy Hull. (How fucking cool do you have to be to be on tour with BRAND NEW and you get on so well with the other opening band, MO, you create your own side project together which, includes two albums and a successful touring schedule? Idk. I’m still trying to figure it out. Pretty fucking cool, I guess.) He’s an artist in the truest sense of the word. Devine is constantly creating material that has been circling the indie rock and emo circuit since the late ’90s, early ’00s. The guy is always finding new avenues and adventures to keep making music, each one, somehow, equally as wonderful as the last.

Julien Baker. How many crying face emojis can I fit into a post before my computer shorts itself? (Moreover, probably from my own tears falling to its surface.) Words betray her. Even a string of the world’s most lovely words insult her and here I am, trying anyway. I’m a masochist, I suppose. (I promise not to write a review of the show because any attempt to recreate this evening will be a hackjob and a middle finger to the true purpose of live music, to live it in real time. I’m slapping every cellphone I see out of every hand. Ok, not really, capture away! But please lap up every little sad scratch of her frets.)

I could tell you the city she’s from (Memphis), where she’s played (Outside Lands, Hopscotch), or what brought her to where she is (Noisey Interview), but the best description of her is Sprained Ankle, her shimmering EP issued by 1631 Records. I’ve said her name more than any other artist in 2016 and I’ll keep whispering her shy, urgent words in my sleep for a long time. Her approach is a delicate daringness. She reaches into a sure deep time-capsule and lets each painful memory singe in the present light. ‘The mouse that roared.’ ‘The little engine that could.’ These are backwards societal colloquialisms which feed the lie that you must be big to conquer and if you are small and overcome, it is only a great feat because of your size. I call bullshit.

Baker’s greatness comes from the weakness breaking her voice as she sings, But I rejoice.
I rejoice. I rejoice. I rejoice.”

Her strength comes from her own torturous struggle with humanity’s great question of faith. She fills up her diaphragm, glances upward, and sings into existence the wonderfully painful ongoing battle that is light vs. dark in this life.

Her sad songs make me feel better.

GET TIX to KEVIN DEVINE + JULIEN BAKER + PINEGROVE in ORLANDO!

I just thought I was lucky enough to have off a Sunday in July, let alone a Sunday that coincided with Pinegrove coming to Will’s Pub. There must’ve been a rabbit’s foot in my pocket because not only did I witness the best show I’ve ever seen at that venue; I bought the vinyl for which I have no record player for and met Evan Stephens Hall as he was leaning against the pool table I frequent almost every week in shitty drunk attempts at flirtatious coordination. I was bumbling. He was gracious. (Story of my inarticulate life.) Their sophomore release, Cardinal, is a folky, emo-laced treasure.

Pinegrove Orlando 2016

Hall’s songwriting is matched only by his ability to sing those gutting, down-to-earth words just as well live. I hung my head as I told him I had never heard any of their music before tonight. He smiled and looked at the record in my stupid, shaking hands, “Well, that’s a good place to start.” Cardinal covers the vast and often bumpy terrain of heartbreak and friendships with the fervor of quiet, yet stern, Americana roots. The Jersey born band headlined Will’s and gives this Social date the kind of depth Jules Verne wrote a small novel about…20,000 motherfuckin leauges deep. Get there on time.

It keeps getting better. What good karma hath we all wrought at this point? Petal is the project of Kiley Lotz with appearances by members of Tigers Jaw, Three Man Cannon, and Captain We’re Sinking. She’s been likened to Waxahatchee and I’m sure lead singer-songwriter, Kate Crutchfield feels honored by the comparison, too. Lotz could survive on her ethereal vocals alone but presses on with grungy guitar tracks like “Chandelier Thief” off of Shame. Her ability to attract work with other artists can be attributed to her hard work ethic, D.I.Y. attitude, and heart-crushing sound.

Let’s all take a minute…

I see my chest rising and falling but I don’t feel breath, only heaving excitement and anxiety for what is sure to be the best show of 2016, (and 2017, 2018, 2019, and on and on until Zorp comes down to earth to melt our faces off). 😎

GET TIX to KEVIN DEVINE + JULIEN BAKER + PINEGROVE in ORLANDO!

Kevin Devine, Julien Baker, Pinegrove, and Petal Orlando Show Announcement: “The Instigator Tour” 2016 by Sarah Schumaker.

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