Blood Orange. Essex Honey.
The Essex-born, New York-based artist Devonte Hynes has kept busy in the six years since his last full-length record under his Blood Orange alias. He has scored films, supported Harry Styles and performed with the London Symphony Orchestra. Essex Honey is about returning to the comforting, tender guitars of his youth, while considering past lives and places left behind. Less pop-facing than ever, it swells with feeling: vocal harmonies that ebb and flow; skittering pulses of drums; murmured conversation; meandering cello and sax; flecks of electronic distortion, and piano cutting through plumes of lush synth. Things feel rich but also fragmentary. A disorienting refrain — "I don’t want to be here any more" — recurs, while songs melt into one another, never quite settling where you’d think. — Tara Joshi
The Observer
