The music that has moved Devonté Hynes through life, and its most difficult emotions, has remained unchanging since he was young. It's a wide-ranging bunch — including Radiohead, New Order, the Smashing Pumpkins, Slipknot and Bach — and while perhaps his music sounds like none of them, there is also no one that sounds quite like his alt-R&B project Blood Orange.
On his first Blood Orange album in six years, Essex Honey, the Essex-born, New York-based singer, songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist travels back to the dense feelings and memories of his youth. Throughout, he pays tribute to the Replacements, Elliot Smith, and other bands that he first fell in love with as a teen with subtle, charming interpolations and references.
This is most implicit on "Westerberg," a tribute to Replacements frontman Paul Westerberg. For the chorus, Hynes and guest vocalist Eva Tolkin sweetly duet, "I'm in love, what's that song? / I'm in love, with that song." (Those lyrics are plucked from The Replacements' "Alex Chilton," itself a nod to thge Big Star singer.) And on the beautifully haunting "Mind Loaded," Lorde belts an Elliott Smith lyric: "Everything means nothing to me!"
Released on Aug. 29 on RCA Records (who signed Hynes in 2022) and Domino Recording Company, Essex Honey is an embarrassment of riches when it comes to collaborators — even considering collaboration has always been core to his project. Caroline Polachek, Lorde, Tirzah, Brendan Yates of Turnstile, Ian Isiah, Daniel Cesar and others add their voices and subtle influence and input across the hauntingly melancholic album dancing through grief, loss and longing.
Soon, Hynes will translate his emotive new music live with a packed tour schedule, kicking off at San Francisco's Portola Festival on Sep. 21. After joining Essex Honey collaborators Turnstile and Lorde on their prospective North American tours in September and October, Hynes will headline four nights at London's iconic Alexandra Palace Theater and close out the year with six dates at Brooklyn Steel; significantly, his former and current hometowns.
While music is central to everything Hynes does, he's always exploring other sides of creativity. He's brought his lush soundscapes to score film and TV shows, including "Queen & Slim," "Passing," and "We Are Who We Are." He's flexed his directorial muscles with his own music videos and those for Beck. Hynes has been an in-demand producer and co-writer since 2012, when he gave a punchy Blood Orange touch to Sky Ferreira's depressed millennial classic, "Everything Is Embarrassing" and Solange's vibrant True EP. Since, he's produced and written for FKA twigs, Carly Rae Jepsen, Tinashe, Kylie Minogue, Mariah Carey and other heavyweights; he's also regularly tapped as a remixer.
GRAMMY.com caught up with Hynes shortly after Essex Honey's release to discuss his longtime musical inspirations, creative process, and the NYC music scene. He also reveals his favorite film directors and what a GRAMMY win would mean to him (he already has a GRAMMY nod for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance and a Latin GRAMMY win with Nathy Peluso).
How are you feeling after hearing people's reactions to Essex Honey?
I've never read a Blood Orange review. Earlier on in, it was easier to not know what people think. Obviously how things are now, you get a general sense as soon as you put something out. You have to actively avoid it if you want that to be the case.
There's a couple of things people sent me that I'm contemplating reading; I get the gist from the titles. When I was not reading reviews when I was younger, it was from a couple places. Whether positive or negative, I felt both of those weren't healthy [to read], and it would have been a nightmare for any of those things to have subconsciously influenced decisions I make, to second guess things. And obviously there's a layer of protection because I have friends that would get so hurt reading [about their music].
Now it's a little different. I think I could do it because I'm 39 and at this point. I'm pretty sure of what I'm doing [Laughs.] — It'd be weird if I wasn't. So I've had a general sense of what people are thinking [about Essex Honey]; it's been quite surprising and, I guess, quite nice.
On Essex Honey, I hear a lot of melancholy and longing. Could you paint the picture of what this music is soundtracking? I know it's looking back at your youth growing up in Essex, but if it were a movie, what would be in the trailer?
Well, there's a couple directors that perfectly align to my taste. [Michael] Haneke's and Mia Hansen-Løve's films are so devastating in how realistic and natural they are. There's an interview with Haneke where he was talking about when he shoots a film in Paris, he's not showing the Eiffel Tower because people that live in Paris see the supermarket, so he shoots the supermarket…
It's this idea that the real life one is living is mundane, and that's actually where a lot of the devastation and joy come from. When someone you care for dies, when something traumatic happens in your life, it doesn't come at the end of a story. Unfortunately, the reason why these things are so devastating is because they happen in the middle. Someone will pass away at 11:30 a.m., but the nurses continue their work the rest of the day, people are still taking the train, people are still texting you. The molecules in your life have just shifted, but the clock hasn't stopped, and everything is continuously moving.
The album is looking at grief and the surroundings of life in that moment. Grief and depression are not the end points. It's this thing in the middle and everything is operating around it; good, bad, happy, joyful, sad, dark, all of it is moving and shifting.
Is it set in a specific point in time — when you're a teen — or is it more so these memories that have lingered from that time?
Yeah, it's more memory. And unreliable because that is true memory. It's hazy, it's looking back. It's why there's so many interpolations on it, because it's thinking about the music I listen to. While writing and listening to music, the natural thing to do was to sing the actual song. It took me there and I don't ever want to cut off a road that will get me somewhere.
What was in your headphones as a teenager? What music was influencing your state of mind back then that you tapped back into here?
Well, I'm lucky that I listen to the same things I've always listened to. [Laughs.] But if I go back to when I was younger and the earliest things that informed me, it's the Smiths, Radiohead, New Order, Megadeth and Slipknot, Prefab Sprout. And [Johann Sebastian] Bach and, when I was really young, [Claude] Debussy, later on, [Maurice] Ravel.
Honestly, everything I'm obsessed with. I've never casually liked anything in my life. [Chuckles.] Smashing Pumpkins, The Smiths, Radiohead and Slipknot were game-changers for me. They were the ones where I was of an age where I was able to take it in in a certain way and try to recreate it.
What's your favorite Radiohead album?
It came later on [in 2007], but In Rainbows. It's crazy. It's flawless.
When I was really young, Channel Four in England showed the Meeting People Is Easy [1998 Radiohead] documentary, which was just after OK Computer came out, after they toured it for a while, and Thom Yorke's in full burnout mode. I recorded it off the TV and watched that VHS a lot. I was already a really, really big fan, but that hooked me in, especially at a time where you didn't see behind-the-scenes footage often.
How did Thom Yorke's burnout sit with you then?
Traditionally, that's always attractive when you're younger. There's never been a crash out that isn't attractive — I'd say even now, to be honest. Obviously, you don't want to go through them. This image was painted by the diaries of Van Gogh and how he got his first successes two decades after he died. It's the tortured artist; he created the archetype.
Back to Essex Honey, I love the way "Mind Loaded" jumps out at you — Caroline and Lorde's voices echoing out and how the energy shifts towards the end. How did that track come together and what were you feeling as you were working on it?
That song is maybe the most Frankenstein of all of them. My process is already quite Frankenstein. Its initial genesis was maybe five years ago in terms of the music. I was constantly working on it, and it was all my voice singing everything. A year later, Kelly Zutrau from the band Wet sang the Elliot Smith line because at that point I was already pretty deep in the idea of interpolating music. And I just kept working on it.
I worked on "Mind Loaded" a lot and, and honestly, it could only have been finished with Ella [Marija Lani Yelich-O'Connor, a.k.a. Lorde], Caroline [Polacheck] and Mustafa. And Daniel Caesar — it's not credited — does a backing vocal, choral thing underneath Mustafa's vocal. Amanda Stenberg added violin to the cellos I did. It's a good example of what happens to me a lot, where I'll get it to a place and I'll feel good with it but I need to bring in friends. I need to show it to friends who I know think differently, to see what they hear and how they interpret it, because I've hit a ceiling. When I bring them in, it smashes the door open. Then when it's time for me to finish it and mix it, I can see it, it's now very clear.
It was one of those songs where I was very confident in it, but for me that sometimes can make a song harder to finish. "The Field" was quite similar where I can see it and I know it could be something that I really enjoy, but it's almost like I have to give it extra care, I can't just bum my way to the end. [Laughs.]
I'm curious how the collaborative dynamic on this album worked. Looking at the tracklist, I'm imagining all these really talented people having a jam session party, but what did it actually look like?
Sometimes it's people that are around me quite consistently, like Mustafa and Daniel [Caesar] and Eva [Tolkin], Ian [Isiah] and Liam Benzvi. They're all friends who live in the same city, we work on each other's music, and we're always around each other. Caroline falls into that camp, but she doesn't live in New York anymore but I'm always gonna call on her for help.
I'm always working at home, and then I'll travel and work in different spots, and I'll dedicate a few days in one place to work. Every few months, I'll book somewhere and whoever's around, I'll invite them to come down. So sometimes there's this few day period where it will be a lot of people in the room. Occasionally there were moments like that [while making Essex Honey], which are usually very good for me. I get all the audio and it's kind of done, and then I just play and mix and assemble.
Do the producer and songwriter parts of your brain feel somewhat separate? That is, do lyrics come to you as you're coming up with a bassline, or can you kind of hear the components of the song coming together as you write lyrics?
I get all the melodies and stuff while I'm making it and producing it, and then I write lyrics to a song as one chunk at the end. I mean, ends because the song ends up getting worked on a bunch. But I never change the lyrics. If anything, I take words out.
I guess they are quite different parts of the brain; I think that's why I do it like that. I need to concentrate on music and producing and stuff, and when it's in a place that is writable to, I like to be able to not touch an instrument and just be writing so that the mind is clear of those other factors.
I can't even think of a song I've written lyrics to while playing an instrument. I don't think I could do that. Sometimes I'll have the instrument near just to see if it makes sense. But yeah, I've never done the music and lyrics simultaneously.
On "Westerberg" you cite lyrics from the Replacements' "Alex Chilton," which is also a tribute to a musician. Why did you want to honor Paul Westerberg in this way, on this album?
That song is a funny one. Sometimes I have concepts in my head for years and years, but they don't exist in any form. I'd always had this idea of a song that did to Paul Westerberg what he did to Big Star.
The music of this song is from about seven years ago, I was working on it and it just naturally went there. That chorus was the only one that could've happened. I love "Alex Chilton" so, so much. I love The Replacements. So it just made sense. And again, it was this period where I was writing interpolations. I wrote that song the same time as another that I never quite finished, that was about a real-life moment of listening to the Smiths in school.
If I could pay tribute to every musician ever I would, it's infinite. But someone like Westerberg, especially with a song like what he had made before, it just felt quite fitting.
Your music sounds so specific to you, I can't really think of other people that sound like Blood Orange. In the Quietus, you talk about how your bass playing is directly inspired by Andy Rourke of the Smiths. Has anyone ever guessed that?
Never. They say everyone but him. It's interesting because Andy Roark was trying to sound like a funk or disco bassist, that's why it's so special. When you hear him in the Smiths with [guitarist] Johnny Marr, who's trying to do old '50s rock and roll type riffs, that combination is what makes it so cool.
You're embedded in the creative wellspring and collaborative energy of NYC. What does that community here feel like to you, and how does it nourish and inspire your own creative practice?
I'm quite lucky that these people are friends. I've never really — except maybe when I was like a teenager — been really in a music scene that is based in performance, gigging and shows, so it's always been not so tangible.
But it feels healthy that the basis is friendship, because with any good friendships, if they need help, you help, you springboard [ideas], you're there for people. There're times when I work on music and I need that help, and vice versa; it's there and it's easy. I'd say it's like safe hands; I feel it's quite safe with it all.
Who were some of your first music friends when you moved to New York?
Caroline [Polachek], for sure, and [her former band] Chairlift: Caroline, Patrick [Wimberly] and Aaron [Pfenning]. And the band We Are Scientists, Keith [Murray] and Chris [Cain], I knew them because [Hyne's teen band] Test Icicles opened for them in London and we stayed friends. They were two of the only people I actually knew who lived in New York. Sam [Mehran], who was in Test Icicles, lived in New York at the time.
And then [I met] Ethan [Silverman] and Chris [Taylor], who ran Terrible Records, who released the first Blood Orange 7-inch. I played them early Blood Orange demos, which they liked, so they invited me to Chris' studio at this church in Greenpoint [Brooklyn]. I recorded "Dinner" and "Bad Girls" there. I recorded in Patrick of Chairlift's studio too.
I came to New York, literally, with a backpack. I was meeting people and ended up making some great friends. Some years after that is when I met Aaron [Maine, a.k.a.] Porches via Ethan, and Lorely [Rodriguez, a.k.a.] Empress Of.
You have a Latin GRAMMY for your collab with the very talented Nathy Peluso and a GRAMMY nod in the classical Category for your album with Third Coast Percussion. What would it mean to you to get a GRAMMY for your music as Blood Orange?
At this point, it's like, that's cool but I've existed without it. I have such personal goals when making music. If the music gets released, then I did the goals.
Everything that happens after the release is completely additional and really incredible. Things like someone wanting to interview me, someone messaging me who likes the music — the same goes for awards — are crazy additions to something that is already pretty insane. When I think about how I make music pretty much the same way I did when I was a teenager and I compare it now, it's beyond. If [a GRAMMY win] happens, that would be pretty insane. But life right now is pretty insane anyway, because I get to release music.