Falling Off the Lavender Bridge

Lightspeed Champion, a desperate musician's new project

If a person completely and irreversibly disappointed with this world up to feeling hatred to himself, stuck in depression, once decided to write poems, what his verses would be like? Probably the best example of such creative work is the new album by Devonte Hynes, most well known as the former member of a now-defunct dance punk band Test Icicle. His new project called Lightspeed Champion, after a series of his school years comic strips, has involved a lot of musicians including the members of Bright Eyes Mike Mogis as a producer and Nate Walcott playing trumpet, drummer Clark Baechle (from The Faint) and guest vocalist Emmy The Great. The team started working on the debut album Falling Off The Lavender Bridge early last year and finally this desperate creation is ready to impress the listeners with an incredibly mature music that is a mixture of styles like Brit-pop and country and the lyrics in which there is no hope for anything good in this world any more.

Emotional music on Falling Off The Lavender Bridge

Tough and vulnerable at the same time the album gives an idea of the singer's ruined dreams that had to face the reality. Falling Off The Lavender Bridge is a speaking title for lavender for Hynes is a symbol of serenity and childhood (when a child he used to hold a piece of lavender while sleeping), and in his understating the whole world is about to be or already is in the situation of a disaster. Orchestra background with the usage of clarinets, piano, violins and a choir and the penetrating backing vocals of Emmy The Great make the music on the record extremely expressive and emotional. In this respect the most vivid track is the longest one, Midnight Surprise: My Time Spent Down The Lavender Bridge/Oh God, Reall lasting over nine minutes it leads the listeners through various moods implying different life periods from melancholy to raging despair and it is impossible to remain indifferent to this frank confession. Melodious single Galaxy Of The Lost tells of what satiety with life results in, and caducity of existence is the subject on composition Tell Me What It's Worth. Autobiographic slow song Salty Water devoted to the singer's creative work with Test Icicle and his dreams amazes with the hopelessness sounding on it, while Everyone I Know Is Listening To Crunk is about people's lack of sincerity and shallowness. Alcoholic delirium on track Let The Bitches Die serves the album's love lyrics distillation whereas the final songs No Surprise (For Wendela)/Midnight Surprise please with catchy tunes but are still full of the same cheerless pessimism and darkness.

A contradictory, harmonious and sensible record

It looks like the verses that joyless can be apprehended calmly only when they are put on such wonderfully beautiful and quality music as there is on Falling Off The Lavender Bridge. Yet this combination absolutely justifies itself. The more one listens to this seemingly contradictory record the more harmonious and sensible it turns out to be. In the end it is quite an undertaking to argue with some of the sullen thoughts for they are all connected with real things, and many will surely insist that all Hynes' lyrics are about life and the real state of things in the today's world, thus, there is no use having one's head in the clouds. Anyway, Lightspeed Champion can easily prove to be a far-reaching project due to the musicians' faultless delivery and the never-ending flow of conscious of the lyrics' author. A complicated and very successful mixture of styles and great vocal parties make Falling Off The Lavender Bridge one of the year's best albums even though not the most uplifting one, and it is very likely that its success inspires its creators for further works that will prove to be the same original and harmonious.