2 weeks ago
3
All of a sudden, music felt completely insignificant to Dev Hynes. In early 2023, just as he was preparing to perform a selection of his classical works at the Sydney Opera House, his mother fell sick and was admitted to hospital. Hynes returned to his childhood home in Ilford, in Essex in England, to be by her bedside. Within two months, she had died. He cancelled the Opera House gig, and several other shows, as he took “time to grieve and focus on getting myself together”.
Music had been a constant in Hynes’ life since childhood. He’d started piano lessons at seven and cello at nine, and launched his career in the early aughts in British dance-punk phenoms Test Icicles. As Blood Orange, he’d released several acclaimed solo albums and written and produced revered releases for Sky Ferreira, Solange Knowles and Carly Rae Jepsen. “It just didn’t matter,” recalls Hynes in a faded Iron Maiden T-shirt from his home in New York, where he’s been based for 17 years. “I really didn’t see a point in it any more.”
After his mother’s funeral, to get some distance from the grief of home, Hynes rented a place in Paris, just a brief rail ride from London. One day, as he was tinkering around the apartment, the algorithm served up a song he’d never heard before that stopped him in his tracks. It was Sufjan Stevens’ Fourth of July.
“I’m a Sufjan fan and I’m a music obsessive, but I have these crazy music holes where I just miss things, right? But this song came on and it felt like it was speaking to me. It sounded like it was inside my head,” says Hynes. “It was so visceral and intense.”
Fourth of July is a track from Carrie & Lowell, Sufjan Stevens’ harrowing album about the death of his estranged mother. At the time, Hynes knew nothing of the song’s backstory. “It was quite striking to me because I didn’t know the story, but it went right inside and I understood the song completely. How many mediums can do that? I’m not Sufjan, but I had this feeling of wow, I can’t believe my occupation is the same as the person who made this, I’m involved in a pretty magical medium. And that was the drive I needed.”
The result is Essex Honey, Hynes’ first new Blood Orange project since 2018’s acclaimed Negro Swan. He’d continued making music in the intervening years, including film scores for Queen & Slim (2019) and Paul Schrader’s Master Gardener (2022), as well as writing and producing for hardcore stars Turnstile and Argentinian singer Nathy Peluso (for which he won a Latin Grammy in 2024). But why the break from releasing music as Blood Orange?
“There was a little bit of, what’s the point?” admits Hynes. “Music was always being made, I never stopped, but I would think to myself: why does it need to be released? It’s a noisy world, and there’s a lot of shit getting thrown at us daily. I don’t want to add my shit to that noise. Why would I do that?”
Essex Honey, the first Blood Orange album since 2018, finds Hynes looking back to his childhood.
It’s not the usual mindset for a successful musician. “I still feel that a lot, and I have to remind myself that it’s a privilege,” says Hynes. “I’m quite lucky that, a) I know how to make music, and b) I have opportunities to release it, and c) there are people that would actually like to hear it. I think about all that and it’s like, ‘get over yourself’,” he laughs.
That it’s officially 20 years since his first professional release – Test Icicles’ blog-hit Boa Vs Python came out on August 1, 2005 – has also played on Hynes’ mind. “I never could have dreamt, 20 years ago, that I’d still be releasing albums,” he says. “I think of all the incredible musicians who don’t have those opportunities, and I think of myself as a teenager, and I have to put something out, even if it’s only one person who listens to it while they’re at the gym or something. Like, that’s cool!”
‘It’s a noisy world, and there’s a lot of shit getting thrown at us daily. I don’t want to add to that noise.’
Due to the time he spent back in Ilford, by his mother’s side and among his childhood haunts, memory and the formative influence of music became key catalysts for Essex Honey. Throughout the album, snippets of well-known songs act like launchpads to memories and emotions, like Proust’s madeleines turned musical.
On Westerberg, Hynes sings the hook from the Replacements’ Alex Chilton – a sort of boomerang tribute back to Paul Westerberg – to honour the music that made him. On Mind Loaded, he sings Elliott Smith’s Everything Means Nothing to Me to evoke both grief and the unifying comfort of pop melancholy. On The Field, Hynes calls in Vini Reilly to recreate the Durutti Column’s Sing To Me. The references act like totems – to comfort, hope, excitement, his mother – in the same way that Sufjan’s Fourth of July helped Hynes reengage with the magical potential of music that, in the midst of grief, had evaded him.
“Thinking about being younger and listening to music was an enormous part of [this album], and so it felt like the most honest thing to do and the most natural way to do it,” says Hynes of using such recognisable musical cues. “George Saunders, the writer, says the reason why his stories are so crazy is because he will use any device that gets the necessary emotion across. I feel the same way musically – I don’t care what it is, I will do it.”
On Essex Honey, Hynes also finds a way to integrate the classical training he’s had since youth. Songs build around orchestral improvisations and float freely like sheet music in the wind. Highlight Vivid Light – featuring woodwind bursts, an acid house break beat, and author Zadie Smith singing about writer’s block – sounds like you’re listening to a jam session happening in another room down the hall.
“Years ago I would keep [my classical work] quite separate because I was scared those connotations would overwhelm the listening experience for people – even though, in my mind, it is all just me making stuff,” says Hynes. “What’s happened is I’m a lot looser and a lot easier on myself now, and in that sense the approach to making music has let things seep in and talk to each other. Before, I would only make things that were, quote-unquote ‘Blood Orange’. But now I trust that since it’s me making it, it will turn out Blood Orange anyway.”
Loading
Beyond Vini Reilly and Zadie Smith, Essex Honey features a who’s who of cameos from Hynes’ friends, including Caroline Polachek, Brendan Yates from Turnstile, Mustafa the Poet and even pop superstar Lorde. Hynes worked on Lorde’s new album Virgin, playing cello, bass, guitar and synths on multiple tracks including single Man of the Year.
“Working on other people’s music is probably the peak of fun musically for me,” says Hynes. His strength in sessions is being a pliable jack of all trades. “When I work on someone else’s music, I’m completely at service to them. If they want ideas, I can give ideas. If they just want keyboards, I can give keyboards. However they want it to go, I’m down, I just need to know. And then it’s super fun for me.”
And when the work’s on his own turf? “When I bring someone in to work on Blood Orange, the main thing is I just don’t want them to think like me,” says Hynes. “I want to get their brain on something, you know? Because I’m with myself all day.”
Blood Orange’s Essex Honey is out now.
Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.
