After six years, Dev Hynes returns to his music moniker, Blood Orange, for Essex Honey, an unraveling of grief for his mother who passed away in 2023. This record refines the impressionist palette present in Hynes’s other projects as he digests complex reflections on a life worth more than the earth and sky to him. His distinct sonic atmosphere disguises some of the biggest stars in modern music, including Caroline Polachek, Mustafa, and Lorde. Hynes proves his ability to harness any instrument on his search for truth, using the natural sound of field recordings in the hauntingly cavernous, “The Last of England”. In “Somewhere in Between” Hynes faces grief not as a wound time will heal, but as one that will change alongside him.
Agriculture’s sophomore release, The Spiritual Sound, is a hitch in your breath, a stab in the gut from seeing yourself too clearly; it’s the sobering truth that humans are doomed to reflect. The album’s two singles, “Bodhidharma” and “The Weight”, mirror the close collaboration between guitarist/vocalist Dan Meyer and bassist/vocalist Leah Levinson. “Bodhidharma” is masterfully restrained, falling into silence before erupting with Levinson’s hisses and Meyer’s dynamic Van Halen-esc solos. The album’s second single “The Weight” reads like a diary entry, with Levinson recounting the violence inflicted upon her loved ones for their identity and the subsequent fear that pervades her own existence. The Spiritual Sound is discordant and clawing, moving through walls of sound and screams that shake the Earth you stand on, with endlessly rich melodies to hold onto.
Rarely do I get the opportunity to send music to my Teta whose favorite artists for the last 50 years are Abba, Fairuz, and Andre Bocelli. However, Rosalía’s ethereal and emotional “Mio Cristo Piange Diamanti” , a powerful ballad of devotion and admiration to a Christ-like figure elicited a “Beautiful!” from my grandmother. Rosalía masters transcendence by drenching her own experiences in the veil of female mysticism, reaching beyond language for something more universal. As reflected in the Patti Smith sample in “La Yugular”, LUX comes from Rosalía’s need to prove herself as more than one of pop’s greatest modern vocalists, “a million doors aren’t enough” for her. Beyond the viral Björk collab, “Berghain”, and the spectacle that comes with an album featuring 13 languages, Rosalía’s LUX is a haunting journey with vivid religious tableaus and something for everybody.
