Blood Orange Essex Honey reviewed with quiet beauty

Dev Hynes's Essex Honey blends dancefloor rhythm with indie pop and grief inspired moods, featuring guests such as Lorde and Zadie Smith

Blood Orange Essex Honey captures grief in a vivid musical portrait

Blood Orange returns with a fifth studio album that is both eclectic and cohesive. Essex Honey opens with Look at You, a track that starts with softly sung vocals over gentle synths and then abruptly shifts into a different groove as guitar strings are picked slowly. The second song Thinking Clean introduces a piano base with hi hat patter, hinting at a burst of energy that never fully lands, instead dissolving into abstract textures and a solitary cello. The album continues to braid genres and eras, pairing indie pop sensibilities with dancefloor rhythms and a fondness for bold, unusual samples. Guests appear sparingly yet are always in service to the mood rather than to marquee moments, including Lorde, Zadie Smith, Caroline Polachek, and others who blend into the atmosphere rather than steal focus.

Essex Honey stands out because its edges are held together by tone and a strong sense of place. The late summer mood feels British through and through, with sunlit warmth and a morning chill that mirror Hynes's personal grief after his mother’s death. The record trusts texture and memory over a single through line, creating a dreamlike flow where familiar samples and new ideas meet. By letting collaborators operate as atmospheric voices rather than feature cameos, the album charts a path for artists to process loss in public without surrendering control of the music. It also signals a broader move in indie pop toward deeply personal yet sonically expansive works that invite patience and repeated listening.

Highlights

Essex Honey invites a longer, more attentive listen and hints at further explorations to come