Lightspeed Champion - Falling Off The Lavender Bridge

Domino

From the thrashed-to-within-an-inch-of-its-life punk-pop of his former band to the shiveringly lovely country caresses of solo debut Falling Off The Lavender Bridge, Devonte Hynes has pursued his musical muse down a particularly crooked path. But believe me, the man they now call Lightspeed Champion really was in Test Icicles. What’s more, this latest incarnation is no half-baked conceit, but a true-hearted, fully-charged foray into those territories more commonly associated with the likes of Ryan Adams and Wilco.

Throughout, the musicianship is of blinding clarity; the production of Saddle Creek resident Mike Mogis peerless. Strings, keys and echoing female vocals provide occasional glister, lifting the earthy, country-tinged, ruminations to the levels of the celestial. The lyrics, meanwhile, betray the album’s creator to be a somewhat bleary-eyed romantic, Hynes’ innate optimism tempered by life’s cruelties. As ‘I Could Have Done This Myself’ attests, relations with women have been somewhat unkind. More than anything, ‘Midnight Surprise’ suggests he is a man in search of himself and of happiness. Of the album’s many revelations, perhaps the most surprising is the Hynes’ vocal. On ‘Salty Water’ and ‘Devil Tricks For A Bitch’, his unvarnished burr keeps the emotional intensity bubbling to the very brim.

Where Devonte Hynes will surface next only he can say, but this much we know: with Falling Off The Lavender Bridge, alt-country’s ‘boy least likely to’ has done remarkably good. Francis Jones

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DOWNLOAD: ‘TELL ME WHAT IT’S WORTH’, ‘MIDNIGHT SURPRISE’.
FOR FANS OF: JOSH ROUSE, BRIGHT EYES.

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