It was this time a year ago that Devonté Hynes last visited our shores under his old moniker, Lightspeed Champion. What was touted as being a full show with backing band turned out to be a solo gig, a rather baffling one at that. At its worst it was glorified karaoke, in retrospect, the shy, wooly-jumpered indie kid that attempted to rouse a near-empty East Brunswick Club was one in a phase of transition.
Jump to twelve months on, and several blocks away to the Northcote Social Club, and Hynes is a man in a more assured mode. Namely as Blood Orange, his new musical guise that turns back the clock on the lush, baroque pop of Lightspeed Champion to the slick eighties funk and soul that scored the neon-lit discos and bars of nocturnal New York City.
First spotted pre-show, mingling front-of-stage during the psychedelic rock slashes of support act Tehachapi, Hynes was bedecked in tattered jeans, a leather bomber jacket and matching cap. Looking like a cross between an outcast from The Warriors and Marlon Brando in The Wild One, his stylistic references are as much cultural as they are musical. His tales of lovesick frustration, delivered with a sticky, soulful croon and a pared-back rhythmic bottom-end, are far-better suited to his one-man shtick of laptop, mic and modest guitar-shredding.
Swiftly forgetting an awkward start, Hynes soon broke the stage/audience boundaries by diving into the crowd – mic-stand and all – to continue his set. A slightly shocked audience, splayed at having the fourth wall so clearly shattered, are filled with nervous respect , as if afraid to interrupt his performance. By Forget It, with its breathless pace and catchy refrain of “I am not your saviour” they’re back to treating the room like a dancefloor and less like a space the artist has breached.
Flitting between stage and audience, Hynes sequences crisp backing beats, the firm backdrop to his feathery falsetto while throwing faux-oriental shapes across his guitar on the loping Sutphin Boulevard and the slick and sultry Champagne Coast. Even stripped of the pulsing kaleidoscope projections, it is essentially a glorified performance of one guy overcoming his introverted ways for showmanship. A knees-bent, needling guitar solo to finish the hour-long set was an indulgence too far, but the Blood Orange live show lends his swollen grooves a robust edge with Hynes; the vaguely reluctant lightning rod literally at the centre of it all. It’s a spectacle that is nothing if not interesting.
BY AL NEWSTEAD
PHOTO CREDIT: ZO GAY
LOVED: Everyone freakin’ out when Dev got crowd-bound.
HATED: Too short really.
DRANK: Dirty Granny cider.
