{"id":114735,"date":"2025-09-03T03:42:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-03T03:42:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/114735\/"},"modified":"2025-09-03T03:42:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T03:42:06","slug":"blood-orange-mourns-beautifully-on-essex-honey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/114735\/","title":{"rendered":"Blood Orange Mourns Beautifully on ‘Essex Honey’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\u201cAs exciting as watching trees sprout\u201d is decidedly a pejorative idiom. Still, it\u2019s somehow the perfect way to describe these elegiac bops. Indeed, Devont\u00e9 Hynes, on his fifth studio LP as Blood Orange<\/a>, manages to make life\u2019s contemplative moments seem urgent, celestial, and rehabilitative. No actual trees sprout on the elemental \u201cVivid Light,\u201d a standout track about gazing aimlessly out the window. But Hynes details life\u2019s vicissitudes with poetic exactitude. \u201cBut now it\u2019s sad in May\/A harder truth to take in (nothing makes it better\u201d),\u201d he coos. Never has a sunny morning seemed so arrestive, so hopelessly illuminative.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe album\u2019s pointed cover, showing a dolorous schoolboy gripping a phone while holding a basketball, hints at the weighty revelations contained therein. The U.K. maverick seemingly wants to capture the random profundity of modern existence. \u201cOne of the things I really love about . . . this artwork is that the boy is holding a phone. And I think that\u2019s super important,\u201d Hynes related in a recent GQ interview. \u201cI always think it\u2019s funny that when people take photos now, everyone hides their phone. That\u2019s just not real life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFrom the outset, Blood Orange conjured up sober images of everyday life via optimistic ditties that underscore freedom and empowerment. \u201cUncle Ace,\u201d a delicious bop on 2013\u2019s Cupid Deluxe, memorializes the queer youths who decamp in NYC\u2019s A, C, and E subway lines. Freetown Sound, his 2016 landmark, features the spectral scorcher \u201cAugustine,\u201d which upholds identity, tying Hynes\u2019s pursuits as a Londoner in New York to those of his Guyanese mother and his Sierra Leonean father in London. And though 2018\u2019s ardent Negro Swan found Blood Orange tackling depression within the Black community, it contained such fast-tracking upbeat hits as the ever-zealous \u201cCharcoal Baby.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tExpect less pumped-up bangers on Essex Honey, whose themes explore mortality and exile, made all the more illustrative in light of the singer\u2019s mother\u2019s death in 2023. But there\u2019s a hearty sense of joy running through even the most dour moments here. It\u2019s mostly about muted tastefulness until a bona fide earworm incites restless danceability. Hynes\u2019s grateful curatorial instincts (emboldened by appearances from everyone from Daniel Caesar to an ad-lib-lilting Zadie Smith) only further the contemplative-exuberance aesthetic, making Essex Honey his most quietly explosive album.<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThinking Clean,\u201d a piano-driven stunner, kicks off with a blunt admission that \u201cI don\u2019t wanna be here anymore,\u201d right before a plaintive cello washes over the soundscape, giving Hynes\u2019s passive timbre the soothing gravitas of a world-weary psalmist. There\u2019s stops and false starts, and a ticking-bomb hi-hat \u2013 all but piquing Hynes\u2019s muted outbursts, as the beat builds to a danceable pace, conjuring a negative-space concerto for the strobe-lit dancefloor. To that end, if you\u2019ve been dying to hear a frilly choral group go HAM on an 808-infused drumbeat, then the midpoint of \u201cMind Loaded\u201d is just up your alley. The song\u2019s first two-odd minutes \u2013 all sumptuous cello and angelic strains courtesy of Caroline Polachek \u2013 are pregnant with depth and basilica-worthy grandeur, wherein a phone on airplane mode, a late summer morning, and a fresh pack of cigs induce Hynes to observe, \u201cEverything means nothing to me,\u201d in a soberingly resonant gesture to Elliot Smith. Elsewhere he celebrates another indie-rock hero with the haunting \u201cWesterberg,\u201d an ode to the Replacements<\/a> frontman that quotes their classic song \u201cAlex Chilton,\u201d cleverly packing a tribute inside a tribute.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\tBut Blood Orange\u2019s mid-tempo bops are intoxicating, to be sure. \u201cVivid Light\u201d revisits peak U.K. soul, boasting Soul II Soul\u2013invoking drums, silky refrains (from an uncredited Zadie Smith), and rapturous flutes. The loping bass on \u201cI Listened (Every Night)\u201d invokes Joni Mitchell<\/a>\u2019s \u201cFurry Sings the Blues,\u201d but Hynes\u2019s brand of blues are mighty fantabulous here, all things considered. \u201cWithin myself, I saw a darker light,\u201d he admits before a driving four-on-the-floor pounce clears away the clouds, giving credence to Hynes\u2019s sunny recollection that \u201cI couldn\u2019t see\/Anything in between that\u2019s soft\/I wasn\u2019t there at all\/A dream is often solo.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSave for its smooth sax solo, \u201cLife,\u201d a plodding self-help-style missive, leaves very little to desire. It\u2019s the lone dud on this otherwise remarkable opus despite its eager assertion that \u201cyou can make it on your own.\u201d But the sonorous \u201cThe Last of England\u201d hits you right in the heart, drawing you into Blood Orange\u2019s world of reflection and mourning. Few albums are this emotionally refined, giving us a real sense of grief \u2014 when life comes at you fast \u2014 while somehow distilling the \u201cit is what it is\u201d mundanity of seeing water drip down the drain. At the end of the day, Blood Orange catches more flies with Essex Honey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cAs exciting as watching trees sprout\u201d is decidedly a pejorative idiom. Still, it\u2019s somehow the perfect way to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":114736,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[64,63,81568,134,2263,81569,136,81570,81571],"class_list":{"0":"post-114735","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-blood-orange","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-joni-mitchell","13":"tag-lorde","14":"tag-music","15":"tag-paul-westerberg","16":"tag-the-replacements"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}