Three years ago, an apartment fire destroyed nearly all of Dev Hynes’ belongings. He lost his dog Cupid, many of his clothes and a computer containing almost all of his demos and samples. In the wake of this tragedy, however, the producer and singer remains undaunted. Last week Hynes released “Freetown Sound,” his third album produced under the pseudonym Blood Orange, a stirring 17 song narration on race, identity and life in New York and the world as a whole.
The album is loaded with big name collaborations such as Carly Rae Jepsen, Blondie’s Debbie Harry and Sky Ferreira, whose career Hynes helped launch when he produced her 2012 hit “Everything is Embarrassing.” The album brings in more unorthodox samples as well, including a sample of Ashlee Haze’s spoken word poetry “For Colored Girls (The Missy Elliot Poem)” right in the first song. The poetry sets the tone for the rest of the album, an unapologetic, powerful, extraordinarily intimate exploration of blackness, womanhood and identity in the United States.
Although the album covers heavy topics, at no point does it feel especially aggressive or demanding. Hynes does not stray from his quintessential, wispy, pop-funk, Blood Orange style, even if he does present some variation.
His style allows the songs to flow together so seamlessly it can be hard to tell where one ends and the next begins. This provides listeners with the option to enjoy “Freetown Sound” in 17 individual pieces, or to interpret the album as one immersive experience, where individual songs are more like the chapters of one book — pieces which are easier to digest individually but belong together as a whole.
From here his voice and those of his collaborators are free to float out of an ethereal background. Jumpy bass riffs and numerous, delicate layers of loops and synth harmonies lightly fall together like tulle, creating volume out of air.
The beauty in the execution of the vocals and harmonies seem so subversive — making their message become almost hypnotic. For instance, there’s no question what the song “Hands Up” refers to, yet the lyrics and the execution are not explicitly angry or demanding. A mother’s worry and a stranger’s empathy float up from Hynes’ falsetto croon when he asks, “Are you sleeping with the lights on baby / Keep your hood off when you’re walking….”
“Freetown Sound” embodies individual narratives found in the roots of how people interact with and navigate an increasingly unpredictable world, and it tells those stories in iconic style, which can be appreciated by fans of almost any genre.
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