Devon Thompson’s inevitability belongs in an enclosed room where you cannot tell what time it is. Her haze is far too cumbrous to have to consider the weight of the sun. Her place on stage poses a priority on you, to identify your one. As I had listened to Thompson’s performance my mind often drifted. Not because it was dull at all, but because good music makes it not about the music.
I had recounted swiftly that same wave her music lashed out. I know I had felt it all before, but Devon Thompson made me swallow it again as a culmination and made it a celebration. So, Thompson’s performance at the Gibson Showroom exercised correctly, knowing that static air lives in enclosed spaces. And that the muffle will then crystalize the potency of Thompson’s hurt.
She came in as chaser to mingling’s conversation and gave purpose to those earlier confrontations. Intermittently she spoke about the notion of a performance and her place amongst it. However, that voice of opposition towards a persona, was the same one singing. I don’t know if she will ever get to experience herself perform, retrospectively.
The kind of current that gets suppressed when dwelling. She is telling us metaphorically, concisely, and concretely what’s lived inside her. And is then expected to do the same off the cuff. So of course, one obliges, it is the structure of the game. But when done, that is what can easily be recounted. But she moves her shoulders to the sound in a way that could only be recounted omnipotently. While her audience then assumes that position. And that is what makes her performance so special.
That she confides in her shoulder as her foot grounds her, opposite and simultaneously. Two positive magnets that make the same body pull away. Active introspection that could not be met if it weren’t for her and her band kick starting it. Miles Knight, who played bass that night, came from a musical model, and later met with Thompson online. First meeting at a skate park to hash it all out before putting on a show two weeks later. Two years later they started making music together. Devon Thompson’s show at the Gibson was a self-fulfilling, self-maintaining prophecy.
Devon Thompson’s debut “Soft Like Water” was released Feb. 8, 2023 in partnership with Epiphone and Gibson Guitars. Self- described as “Raw, Seething, and Scathing” and a promise for more abiding by that law.
Devon Thompson (Photo by Lucia Llamas)
Q&A with Devon Thompson
When thinking about your music, what would you coin as Devon Thompson- Esque?
My music style has gravitated between the 60s and the 90s with the way that I write. When it comes to as much as like the drumbeat, the groove that we use, the notes we use to write it; I base things off of sound and style; literally style of clothes and looking at things. I am really big on audio and visual association so I have a Pinterest, mood boards. I just like stuff, I add a bunch of stuff. And sometimes it doesn’t come off exactly as it sounds but I never know what’s going to happen. Mostly it does come from a place of 60s and 90s audio visual association that leads it to be very raw and unfiltered. Within the writing there are no surprises, it’s just exactly what it is.
How does that differ from what you imagine others would say is Devon Thompson-esque?
My hope is that people understand my message and that’s just, it is what it is. I want people to understand a lot of people who write songs, when talking about breakup songs — it’s just all the same to me. I feel like there are so many underlying things deeper than that. Like existential questions that everyone thinks of that we’ve written about. Just deeper things that people constantly think about that aren’t talked about.
Which do you think is more important to consider?
Obviously, something that I’ve learned is that no one will perceive anything like you or how anyone else does and that’s something I’ve had to come to terms with. Like how I see myself is not how every other person sees me and my message, but all you can do is lay the foundation to allow people to understand as much as they can. I think that it’s important to consider what the audience is getting. I think it’s the audience and seeing what they get from your message. So far it seems like it’s been received the way that I wanted it to, with the song that I just released. Even with the groups that I’ve worked with.
Like Gibson and being one of their artists. I love them specifically because of the realness of what it is. It is real artists and real musicians. There’s no influencer, it’s not tainted by basic pop culture. It’s really real, these are real people. All these talented people that they have acquired under their business and it’s an honor that they’ve seen that in me and wanted me to be apart of that, it’s so cool. It’s all I’ve ever wanted and so they’re kind of the first ever people who’s started to see that and my message. I think that’s why it can work, because I’m not some kind of dancing TikTok girl.
What emotion do you feel your music is most derived from?
I have a problem with not writing positive music. The problem is, it’s anger, it’s from a place of bitterness and mistrust and being hurt. But I have to say to that, I think that within all these couple years of writing that I’ve done with this specific team, is a form of healing from trauma, from past, because I have to get it out somehow, and I wasn’t getting it out before.
Once I started writing, like really writing and really digging into stuff, getting it out is a form of healing from traumatic past of just constant bullying from past experiences in school. So, I would definitely say a bitterness. Also, a curiosity for what things could be. And a lot of things don’t have to do with love in my songs. More so existential questions and deeper questions of life. I think that my ultimate goal with my writing, to explore that and pour that out there. So, there is the bitterness and the anger, but it is also that curiosity. A what’s next sort of thing.
Do you find your music is more of a revelation or a reconciliation of your own thoughts?
It comes with both, but I think definitely it’s revelations. When I am mid-writing is when I see things I didn’t notice before, like oh I didn’t know I felt like that. Literally connecting the dots myself, it’s like free therapy. I like to say if you’re cursed and gifted with the curse-gift of being a writer it comes with its pros and its cons. It’s all consuming, it’s something you’ll never be able to get away from. Your brain is constantly living in this. For me, I feel like I’m constantly living in this dream-like state. Because I have to constantly make concepts and making meaning of the meaningless.
Within the realm of cycle- What’s something from your upbringing that at a point you disbanded from, but now you’ve reconnected with?
I stopped writing music for a while in my early high school time. I stopped doing music at all. I hated it. It was the bullying. It was like “why am I doing this,” because I went through my middle school just being completely berated and absolutely just trash. It was like why am I doing any of this, I really just feel like an idiot.
A complete outsider, no one understands what I am doing. I switched schools my freshman year of high school, I tried to be normal. No music, nothing. It was from trying to fit in and feeling like you have to comply with the system and societal norms. But then I found a different path of going to shows in my sophomore year. It completely changed everything going to the local music scene in L.A.
The small music scene not the mainstream, big venues or anything like that. The small shows were just like I can do this, this is what I want to do. I feel like I’ve really reconnected with being honest. I feel like I’ve tried to ignore being honest with people about how I feel about things because I didn’t want people to think I was weird. I didn’t want to be targeted anymore. What I’m doing right now makes me a target. It’s being brutally honest. I used to be brutally honest and am even more so now.
How do you take your coffee?
Now I take it black with sugar. And I have always had it with creamer my whole life but recently I stopped. I just like how bitter it is. I like the fact that there was the sweetness there, but the creamer dulls it because when you have the sugar, the taste of the coffee is still there. The sugar and just the black coffee itself, is where you can taste the kick of the coffee.
Because coffee has a note that makes it jump out, a little bitter. But when you put creamer in it, it dulls it. Which makes sense even when you look at it, it just looks like it does. So right now, literally within the past week I have started drinking it black with sugar. I do love a good bittersweet.
Devon Thompson’s “Napoleon” will be released March 24.
