Kevin Devine, 'She Stayed as Steam' -- Free MP3 Download

Kevin Devine has been talking about putting out his new EP, 'She Stayed as Steam,' since the day he determined that its previously unreleased songs -- 'She Stayed as Steam' and 'Big Bad Man' -- weren't going to make it onto his latest full-length album, 'Brother's Blood.' To this day, his decision still somewhat surprises him.

"I haven't heard the EP all the way through yet," Devine tells Spinner. "I got it onto my iPod over the last week of the tour, and after I dropped the band off at the airport and I was driving to return the van in Southern California, 'Big Bad Man' came on, and I was like, 'Holy s---. This sounds amazing. Why the hell didn't I put this on the record?'"

The rationale didn't come easily for the Brooklyn-based songwriter, who originally recorded 15 tracks for 'Brother's Blood': the 11 that made it onto the final product, the two presented on the new EP and a pair called 'The Weather's Wonderful' and 'What's Keeping Us Young,' which appeared on a 2008 tour-only EP. Ultimately, he was left with the challenge of sifting through various tracklisting sequences before coming up with the arrangement of the record.

"'Big Bad Man' in some way felt like a really great version of a song I've been writing for 10 years. [It] felt like this song that I loved the harmonies, I loved everything about it, but [that is was] like something I kind of do a lot," Devine reasons. And in defense of leaving 'She Stayed as Steam' off of the record, he says, "There's a sort of ambient, slow build quality to 'She Stayed as Steam.' It kind of starts with this spaciness, and dynamically it's building subtly, subtly, until it kind of pops into this thing. It kind felt like we had a few songs like that on the record already."

It was a logical ruling, but with Devine's pride in these songs lingering, the 'She Stayed as Steam' EP was born -- featuring them, as well as remixes of 'Brother's Blood' tracks 'Hand of God' and 'Another Bag of Bones.' As a bonus, the vinyl release of the EP includes live versions of the Devine tune 'Ballgame' and a cover of Leonard Cohen's 'Chelsea Hotel No. 2.'

"In some ways 'She Stayed as Steam' is kind of like -- in a really broad term -- a love song," Devine says of the EP's title track. "In some ways it's kind of like a lost love song. In some ways it's kind of like coming to terms with lost love, coming to terms with the role you played in pushing love away, coming to terms with yourself about some of the s----ier impulses you have or more confusing impulses you have."


The song is, like most of his pieces, "kind of half fantasies that are born out of certain real-life experiences." Though Devine tends to avoid handing out literal explanations of his works, he walked Spinner through his personal interpretation of 'She Stayed as Steam.'

"That [first] verse, those words, are about watching someone I knew sing and this feeling of disconnection and maybe loneliness that you project onto the singer," Devine explains. "It's this sort of empathizing agent, sort of feeling this kind of thing that you feel when you're in love with music, which is that you're the only person in the room that actually understands what's being said -- even though you probably don't."

"And then the second verse," Devine continues, "is kind of taking that experience home with you, kind of being sort of numb but also alive, and in that numbness walking home. There's these words about pins and needles, blood not moving to your feet, the weird disconnected feeling of kind of being overwhelmed by this experience and almost like watching yourself walk home. I feel like a lot of times in my life, I've felt like I was watching my life while I was living it."

As the song builds, Devine says, "That panic attack part, it's kind of the guilt feeling or the fear that you're not going to figure it out, this feeling of hurting people. I feel like 'you killed her in waves' is what we do in relationships -- or the ones that don't work. It's a gradual process of killing it. It takes a long time. It's not all at once, usually. But then when it's gone, it's gone. But there's all these things; you look around, and it's stray pieces of hair in your apartment. It's a restaurant you can't go to anymore. It's a bed you no longer feel comfortable sleeping in, or a movie you don't feel as comfortable laughing at -- all these intangibles, all this life, this air."

"I feel like by the end, you're just trying to step out, move forward and acknowledge the fact that this happened, but that, you know, something else will happen, too," Devine concludes. "Life isn't over just because this part of it is. I think that's, to me, the guts of the song."

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