Blood Orange
Essex Honey
RCA
Rarely has a set of lyrics so uneasily imbedded in sorrow and sorriness, and imbued with bittersweet heart- and soulache, sounded as free, breezy, and post-R&B satiny as does the new Dev Hynes album. In this Blood Orange guise, Essex Honey—his first album in seven years, nearly to the day—takes the composer’s usuals of complex arrangements, epic electronica, and intricate melody-making and pushes them into the red; bigger than his past work (e.g. 2018’s Negro Swan) for a wall of sound and promise that finds our protagonist—amid a roomful of guests—crooning his way through songs about dark weather, lost hope, and New Order.
Along with his production’s grand sonic gesture, Hynes’ Honey takes bits from, or interpolates, moments from a wide range of heroes such as the late king of melancholy, Elliott Smith (“Mind Loaded,” with featured guest Lorde intoning Smith’s “Everything Means Nothing to Me”) and the rough-riding Replacements during “Westerberg,” which actually uses the chorus from the band’s “Alex Chilton” in what must be Essex Honey’s most meta segue. Additionally, UK ambient guitar hero Vini Reilly’s The Durutti Column and woozy elements of ’80s electro-funk outfit Warp 9 and Yo La Tengo’s music are shiningly put on display throughout Essex Honey.
All that, and for what? For the sake of grieving and self-pity on “Somewhere in Between,” where Hynes heaves breathily his need to be alone rather than here, over what sounds like The Carlysle’s barroom piano. Or the aptly verdant “The Field” and its woe-begotten words of grayness and letting go, to say nothing of the equally mossy “Countryside” where Dev just wants to find “comfort in the leaves.” You wouldn’t think Hynes would be quite so sad with a group of friends in attendance such as author Zadie Smith, actor Amandla Stenberg, songwriter Caroline Polachek, Wet’s Kelly Zutrau, and neo-soul artist Daniel Caesar among them. But that’s just who Hynes is throughout the moody Essex Honey—a guy who’s loneliest in the most crowded of rooms.
