Blood Orange: Essex Honey review | Alexis Petridis’s album of the week

(RCA)Gorgeous melodies ground Dev Hynes’s questing fifth album, via dancefloor rhythms, indie pop and languorous funk – and cameos from Lorde and Zadie SmithDev Hynes’s fifth studio album as Blood Orange opens with a series of unexpected musical juxtapositions. The first track, Look at You, starts out with softly sung vocals over a cushion of equally soft synthesiser chords, before stopping dead, then re-emerging as almost an entirely different song: harmonies over guitar chords strummed so slowly you can hear the plectrum hitting each individual string. The second, Thinking Clean, offers a piano over pattering hi-hats: there’s something anticipatory about it, like an intro that’s about to burst into life, but when it does – complete with dancefloor rhythm – the song swiftly falls apart. The piano becomes increasingly abstract, before everything gives way to scrabbling, apparently improvised cello.It’s a lot to cram into six minutes, but anyone familiar with Blood Orange’s back catalogue might reasonably ask: what did you expect? Since he adopted the name, Hynes’s career has occasionally intersected with the mainstream, although never in a straightforward way. His biggest track, Champagne Coast, was belatedly hoisted to platinum status by a burst of TikTok virality, 14 years after release. As a producer and songwriter, his name has appeared in the credits of albums by major pop artists including Mariah Carey and Kylie Minogue, but never as a dependable hit-maker, more a signal that said artist is craving a hint of left-field cool. His albums exist in their own world, filled with unexpected musical jump-cuts, their variety indicated by the featured artists: Skepta and Debbie Harry, Nelly Furtado next to Yves Tumour, A$AP Rocky alongside Arca. Continue reading...

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