Falling Off The Lavender Bridge - Lightspeed Champion

We've all heard the stories of the plethora of unique characters that make up the modern music scene. It's true that everyone has their quirks and Dev Hynes aka. Lightspeed Champion has more than his fair share. Musical self loathing, agoraphobia and a tendency to appear randomly on daytime TV shows however cant mask this shrewd musical talent, especially since he gathered himself sufficiently to write his debut solo album: "Falling From the ...
...as his disturbingly cold take on subjects such as alcohol, loss of virginity and racial hatred.

The subjects above, combined with track titles like "All to Shit" and "Let the Bitches die" and a history in infamously chaotic 'grindie' band "Test Icicles". You'll probably be expecting to have a cacophony of noise pound your ears. But that would have been uncharacteristic of the energetic yet shy Hynes and ... more

We've all heard the stories of the plethora of unique characters that make up the modern music scene. It's true that everyone has their quirks and Dev Hynes aka. Lightspeed Champion has more than his fair share. Musical self loathing, agoraphobia and a tendency to appear randomly on daytime TV shows however cant mask this shrewd musical talent, especially since he gathered himself sufficiently to write his debut solo album: "Falling From the Lavender Bridge" laying bare his clever, dry wit as well as his disturbingly cold take on subjects such as alcohol, loss of virginity and racial hatred.

The subjects above, combined with track titles like "All to Shit" and "Let the Bitches die" and a history in infamously chaotic 'grindie' band "Test Icicles". You'll probably be expecting to have a cacophony of noise pound your ears. But that would have been uncharacteristic of the energetic yet shy Hynes and could well have lead to a abstract if not pretentious album. The sound of the album is instead a gentle but interestingly twisted one, backed up with a mix of simple indiesque and balladish drumbeats (provided by the Faint's Clark Beachle). The airy acoustic guitar woven into the songs combined with the caress of a string section bring the sweet tone of the albums home; Nebraska to the words of a confused and tense mind.

Dev spent several months in Nebraska finishing and recording the album with Brighteyes' instrumental wonderkind Mike Mogis and a range of other musicans who quote "Just came round to hang out and ended up playing on the record". While Mike himself and Nate Walcott can account for some of the album's warmth it is Hynes' own ability to look back on some fairly negative experiences and see humour and meaning which stops the album from being an angry rant, for example in a promo interview with label Domino he said of the stirring and seemingly upbeat song "Tell me what it's worth": "The only racial hatred I ever get walking down the street in Dalston is from rude boys. It's really weird.".

The contrast of the hurt and twisting lyrics could easily have come off as artifical and at some points on the album does, but while on occasion there is a sense of pretentiousness the album generally comes across as an intelligent and very tunefull, quirk ridden piece of work. The feeling that someone is constantly wondering "what can we put here to sound cleverer?" was a problem though it came nowhere near ruining an album that has quickly and rightly earned the appreciation of fans of Dev's past work and strangers alike. 

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