Exclusive Premiere: Stream Jeff DeVito’s New Single “Sycamore”

By: Staff –

Emerging artist Jeff DeVito is back with his new single “Sycamore”, which you can stream exclusively via Aesthetic Magazine below.

“Sycamore is essentially a nostalgia song, a loss-of-innocence song,” said DeVito. “It’s not so much about knowing you can never go back, but how it feels when you realize you didn’t even notice it was gone. It has a dark vibe with its minor chord progression and the interplay between flangy/fuzzy guitar and ’80s-ish synth, but also an uplifting chorus that’s triumphant in its celebration of the memories.”

DeVito wrote his first songs on a Casio keyboard and vintage ¼” reel-to-reel in 1990s suburban New Jersey. When his uncle started teaching him guitar, he embraced it as the perfect new tool for learning songs by his favorite bands and crafting more advanced works of his own.

DeVito started his first band in high school and named it after the title of a random physics text book chapter. “Particle Zoo” has endured as the name of every incarnation of the band he’s fronted since then—as well as a reminder of the love of science he has maintained throughout his life. While plugging in at indie rock clubs and delivering a steady output of original album releases during the early 2000s, DeVito also studied biology and worked a day job in the lab.

In the years since, DeVito married and started a family, but never stopped writing new material or refining his craft. He became a regular in NYC songwriting circles and pivoted from a performing musician to one who studied up on recording and production techniques instead. Over time, he built a home studio and tapped into his musical network to record all the elements of a project that would become his first solo album, Acceleration Due To Gravity.

“It started as an excuse to practice mixing, using old demo recordings and song ideas that had never seen the light of day with Particle Zoo because we always had so much other material to work with,” observes DeVito as he contemplates the origins of ADTG. “Then I gradually brought in some newer songs and it just took on a life of its own. I noticed, as an album started to take shape, that all the songs hit on some element of time or distance or weightlessness, and so the album title kind of just presented itself as a distillation of those concepts.”

When DeVito realized his labor of love might actually work as a record release, he tapped into past members of Particle Zoo to begin rehearsing for a tour. Christie, Suler, and even Dacks all signed on. With Holler now living on the West Coast, DeVito reached out to Fairmont drummer and longtime friend and fan, Christian Kisala, to man the keyboards. The quintet promptly started jamming the new ADTG material and their favorite PZoo songs until COVID struck and put live performance efforts on pause.

Until touring can start up again, Acceleration Due To Gravity will move forward with an October 23, 2020 release date.

“I put a lot into this journey and I still want to share the music with anyone who’s interested,” says DeVito. “There’s plenty of ways to connect these days and touring will come back into the picture at some point. Until then, I’ll focus on seeing through this album and maybe even get a head start on the next one. Or who knows…” the scientist-at-heart wonders. “Maybe I’ll get back into the lab and help make a vaccine for COVID—and of course write a song about it.”