‘Grief England youth & music’ is emblazoned on the t-shirts sold at the merch stall in the foyer of Alexandra Palace. If you don’t want to read the rest of this piece, the t-shirt works as a pithy, to-the-point review of Essex Honey, Dev Hynes’s fifth studio album as Blood Orange. It’s a record that saw Hynes journey to his childhood home of Ilford – just 11 miles from tonight’s venue – to reckon with grief and memory after the loss of his mother.
The record is a brilliant, heart-rending exploration of his childhood and growing up in Essex, the music jumping between past and present, filled with both joy and sorrow. The songs feel not only like a processing of death, but also a celebration of life – the sadness and loss alchemised into a kind of hope.
And tonight’s show – the third of four he’s played in the round in Alexandra Palace’s intimate, ornate Victorian theatre – echoed that. It was a performance filled with moments of stillness and melancholy but also hope, beauty and movement.
Throughout the show Hynes flits between instruments – from keyboard to guitar to cello – while the band of Eva Tolkin, Ian Isiah and Tariq Saleem Al-Sabir’s voices and instruments swirl and mingle to create something vital, vibrant and alive.
Tracks that feel hazy, gentle and gorgeously softlit on record feel harder and more kinetic here, the band adding a propulsive crunch to Countryside, Look At You and the extraordinary The Last of England.
The Field’s ecstatic, propulsive warmth is a highlight, as Daniel Caesar joins the band on stage, yet it’s often when it’s Hynes performing alone that it becomes most affecting. There was a haunting cover of How Soon Is Now? with just Hynes and his cello, and an acoustic version of ‘The Train (King’s Cross)’ was strikingly, achingly poignant – his tender voice shaking with vulnerability as he sang “Can’t turn back and the worst is yet to come”.
Blood Orange (Henry Croston)
And though most of the set is drawn from Essex Honey we also had tracks like You’re Not Good Enough from his debut album as well as the swaggering funk of Charcoal Baby and Champagne Coast – a track that has become his biggest hit thanks to TikTok virality and got the biggest reaction of the night.
Hynes said little between songs except to acknowledge “This is very cool and very crazy” – his music speaking for him – and it ended with the starkly exquisite I Can Go, the stage bathed in pitch blackness. As the band departed Hynes is left on stage on his own to sing Time Will Tell alone – the lyrics reflecting on the passage of time and the uncertainty it brings. “Time will tell if you can figure this and work it out… It is what it is”. It feels like a fitting thought to leave us with after the journey of reflection he’s taken us on.
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‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source ca.news.yahoo.com ’
