Bad Books

Bad Books is an American indie rock side project born from the collaboration of Andy Hull, frontman of Manchester Orchestra, and Brooklyn singer-songwriter Kevin Devine. The two met while touring with Brand New in 2007 and formed the project in 2010, initially envisioned as also including Brand New guitarist Vinnie Accardi. What emerged is a genuinely shared songwriting partnership rather than a guest-feature arrangement, with Hull and Devine trading lead vocals and writing duties across their releases.

Musically, Bad Books blends Manchester Orchestra's dense, emotionally charged indie rock with Devine's more folk- and singer-songwriter-rooted sensibility, producing songs that swing between quiet, confessional passages and heavier, full-band crescendos. Tracks like «Forest Whitaker» and «Army» showcase this push and pull, while the project as a whole reads as a looser, more collaborative counterpart to both members' primary bands.

The group has released a handful of albums together — their self-titled debut, a follow-up, and later III — with Devine continuing to perform Bad Books material in his own solo sets, underscoring how porous the boundary is between this project and his main body of work. For fans of Manchester Orchestra or Kevin Devine, Bad Books functions as a distinct but complementary chapter in both artists' catalogs.