Lightspeed Champion - Falling Off The Lavendar Bridge (Domino)
UK release date: 21 January 2008
track listing
1. Number One
2. Galaxy Of The Lost
3. Tell Me What It's Worth
4. All To Shit
5. Midnight Surprise
6. Devil Tricks For A Bitch
7. I Could Have Done This Myself
8. Salty Water
9. Dry Lips
10. Everyone I Know Is Listening To Crunk
11. Let The Bitches Die
12. No Suprises (For Wendela)/Midnight Surprise
It's the same old story: boy meets boys. Boys form band. Band take unfunny
punning band naming to astonishing levels. Band burst onto 'scene'. Scene
adopts band despite the fact that band aren't actually very good. Band
realise this fact. Band disband. One particular boy in band gets over band
by coming back as acoustic singer/songwriter.
How many times have we heard that before? James Blunt, David
Gray, James Morrison, all served their time in the old
art-punk-dance-noise rock scene before finding their true calling as
sensitive types with heartfelt lyrics and a demeanour you could take home
to granny. Dev, you ain't impressing anyone.
Ok, maybe you are. Because whichever way you slice it, this rebirth is
novel. But hey, so was Not a Penny More and look how badly that turned
out.
Fortunately for all, Falling Off The Lavender Bridge is better than both
Jeffery Archer and Test-Icicles. Faint praise? Well no. It's a
sweet, brave, unexpectedly good record. Personal to the point of
voyeurism, subtle in a fashion you can't quite believe.
Plus, as reincarnations go, it's somewhat cool. Sort of a reverse Dylan.
From electric to unplugged. From play 'really fucking loud', to 'play so
quiet you don't wake a dormouse'. You can almost hear the faint shouts
of "Judas" from The Old Blue Last.
Does that make Dev Hynes the Shoreditch Dylan? Maybe. Even if Robert
Zimmerman never told us to "wake up and smell the semen". He's even got
Emmy The Great to shoulder the Joan Baez role.
But it probably doesn't. Hynes isn't a protest singer, he's too scared,
too confused, too baffled for that. Because some of the most
interesting moments on Falling Off The Lavender Bridge are some of the
most bi-polar.
Like Midnight Surprise. Ten or so minutes, from the duvet cowering "Oh,
fuck, I think she just saw me" too the aforementioned 'rise and get a load
of this bodily fluid'. It sounds like it should be horrific, but the way
it unfolds and twists, through lilting pedal steels and specks of keys,
make it rather wonderful. One of a number of vignettes that make it
inevitable you want to continue digging through the turmoil of Hynes life.
Galaxy Of The Lost is all Elton John pianos and irradiated lemon
bitterness. All To Shit is a wistful, and foul mouthed, lullaby, and the
uber wry Devil Tricks For A Bitch could raise a smirking grimace at a
Smiths convention.
So maybe we weren't expecting it, but Falling Off... is an unqualified
success. Smart and funny. Bold and layered. Witty and affecting. Roll on
the next reinvention. Provided it's not a Test-Icicles reunion.
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