Image Credit: Johny Pitt, RCA Records

Six years since his last studio album, Essex Honey draws us into Blood Orange’s (Dev Hynes) exploration of mourning with intriguing musical twists and turns. An homage to his mother after her death in 2023, the album stands out against his earlier, more upbeat alternative R&B discography. Its haunting interludes and stacked harmonies are paired with experimental synthesisers and jazzy piano solos weaving in and out of each song. A more relaxed and low-key album, Blood Orange invites us on his return home to London and Essex, and what ‘home’ can mean when it has so drastically changed.

Opening the album with soft synthesiser chords in ‘Look at You’, the tone of Essex Honey is introduced with a distinct poignancy driven by mystical vocals. The chords drop dead, and we are transported into these harmonies foregrounding a slowly strummed guitar. They sonically haunt and dominate this track – “How can I live / Knowing that’s all we give?”, yet the song abruptly ends, and we are thrown into the second, ‘Thinking Clean’. Anticipatory piano plays alongside a pitter-patter of hi-hats, and when it reaches its climax, the song bursts into life and a cacophony of cello (a nod to Hynes’ musician tuition as a child), abstract piano, and percussion takes over. Everything unwinds but simultaneously falls into place – the song, like its predecessor, is held together with a wistful atmosphere, provided by Blood Orange’s complex and personal lyricism.

The eclectic sound of the album also lies in the range of artists featured throughout. ‘Mind Loaded’, the most popular song on Essex Honey, features Lorde, Mustafa, and Blood Orange’s classic collaborator, Caroline Polachek. Although not immediately noticeable upon the very first listen, Polachek’s incredible vocal flipping draws us into the moment in which Lorde soars “Everything means nothing to me”, perfectly uniting with Mustafa’s deeper tone. The range of talents here, with their own distinct styles and sounds, flawlessly blends with Blood Orange’s iconic synth R&B production. The song has a mixture of pensive guitar riffs to a melodic piano, and pulse-racing BPMs. Occasionally, moments when these sounds jump in and then suddenly disappear can seem quite disconcerting, but they add a level of depth that encapsulates the entirety of Essex Honey – they connect the mournful and reflective tone of the album with a carefully curated beat, allusive to the unwavering persistence of time explicitly felt through grief. ‘Mind Loaded’ emotionally clings on to the past and, at the same time, forces both the listener and Hynes into the future. 

‘Countryside’ – the seventh song on the album – is especially underrated. With its mellow, bedroom-pop essence, the primary mood of the song resonates with a mid-summer melancholy: the synthesisers are hazy and warm, and the vocals have a dreaminess indicative of the desire to escape the city’s harsh “broken lights”. The sound of the song epitomises the feeling of being back at home in rural England, with nothing left to do but think and escape from reality. Whilst the sound of the album shifts with this song, the tone becomes multifaceted – grief has now become a bittersweet yearn for the past, a new stage in which Blood Orange is redefining ‘home’. The melodies are as beautiful as they are captivatingly sad, perfectly capturing the point in which grief makes one want to disassociate from the present. 

Essex Honey becomes especially vulnerable in ‘The Last of England’. The song opens with an audio recording between Hynes and his mother from their last Christmas together. Continuing to grapple with that bittersweet desire to run back into the past, Blood Orange preserves her voice alongside a melancholy piano, later singing ‘Time has made it seem we can talk / But then they took you away’. The beat comes in, and the power of time sweeps the song away, mirroring the poignant memories Hynes’ had with his mother. Both family and childhood are portrayed even more intimately in this song, holding onto ‘home’ with a heartwrenching nostalgia – ‘Ilford is the place that I hold dear’ projects over the transcendent blending of his childhood cello and his adult alternative R&B, these two versions of Hynes’ becoming one through the loss of his mother. 

Nonetheless, glimpses of energy are scattered through the album, with ‘I Listened (Every Night)’ reflective of his earlier album Coastal Grooves. Carried with an intoxicating bass lick and syncopated percussion, a disco club beat frames the song. Whilst seemingly different from the aforementioned tracks, the song still carries that wistful atmosphere maintained throughout the album. The stages of grief more clearly come into place by this point in the album, Blood Orange audibly painting each differing mood and phase with every rhythm, instrument, and beat in each song. 

To Blood Orange, grief remains fickle and non-linear, specifically through his merging of classical instruments and tech beats. Whilst typical symphonies have a rise and fall, Blood Orange merges them together whilst still reflecting the interconnected stages of mourning. The phases in this album cycle through depression and denial, stuck on the climax of death whilst trying to navigate the uncertainty in life and ‘home’. The unexpected emergences of sounds vanish just as quickly, symbolic of a memory you can’t quite place, especially in Hynes’ physical return back home. These touchstones of home, of Ilford and Essex, placed throughout the album emphasises the intrinsic disconnect and vulnerability grief pushes onto the individual, with Blood Orange beautifully executing the complexity of these both sonically and lyrically. In Essex Honey, grief becomes amorphous, resisting expectations and cliche. Blood Orange brings us with him on his journey home and into his childhood, inviting us into the complexity of grief rather than running away from it. In doing so, Essex Honey becomes a heartfelt exploration of mourning, with all the light and darkness of it. 

For those familiar with Blood Orange’s work, this album offers a deeper, more personal journey with his music that will not disappoint. For those unfamiliar, it provides an insight into the many layers his work has, whether it’s a funky beat or a sombre ballad. A well developed and intimate album, Essex Honey is a true standout amongst his discography.