Blood Orange's Sonic Experiments

"Above all else, grief is intensely personal. Where hope is a thing with feathers, a flying, beautiful feeling we all recognize, grief is its opposite: a universal emotion that's nonetheless mostly private and impossible to convey in its depths. Grief creates a gulf between you and other people. I find that ironic, given its universality. We'll all lose someone or something foundational, but that certainty doesn't make it any more legible. Though it does resonate; it does produce echoes in others."

"The impenetrability of grief is a theme that sits at the center of Blood Orange's fifth and latest album, Essex Honey, which is more than anything a collection of laments. Dev Hynes (the artist behind the pseudonym) is often serious and often wistful-see his albums Negro Swan and Cupid Deluxe -but here the tone is different, simpler and darker. Though the album isn't without its moments of healing, those, too, are personal."

"But the thing that I love about Essex Honey is its attempt to cross that unbridgeable chasm between Hynes's grief and our own. He pulls us in even if his pain and ours remain separate. Essex Honey 's effectiveness is found in its details, in how Hynes is able to take us to the source of his grief; the room isn't sealed, and now he's bidding us enter."

Essex Honey centers on personal grief, presenting a collection of laments with simpler, darker tones than previous records. Dev Hynes balances seriousness and wistfulness while including moments of private healing. The album invites listeners into intimate spaces through detailed production and lyrical specificity that traces the source of loss. Songs such as "Look at You" open with sparse, reverbed vocal lines and thumping bass that allude to deep absence. "Thinking Clean" delivers urgent contemplation of being emptied and time's rush. The record aims to bridge private sorrow and shared resonance without dissolving the separateness of pain.

Read at The Nation