Lightspeed Champion
Falling Off the Lavender Bridge

THE REVIEW

How much do I like the new album by Lightspeed Champion?

The revived Dev Hynes settles in Omaha, Nebraska, and improvises as a pop-folk singer, after putting an end to him and the coquettish nu-rave from Test Icicles (remember them?). Rising from the ashes of the previous musical experience, under the moniker Lightspeed Champion, he invents from scratch the album "Falling Off The Lavender Bridge," a sign of his conversion and the changing (musical) times. An album that certainly doesn't change your life but is destined to "be marked with white coal" because it represents a small rarity in its introspective melodies, in its almost silken "manner," sometimes slightly awkward, sometimes too much, to the point of derailing into the dreamlike and naïve. An open-eyed dream or something very similar. This is the sense evoked by songs that last up to 10 minutes (musical times that change, as we said...) like the precious "Midnight Surprise," which, on its own, disproves the value of the only and first album of his previous band. "Dry Lips": another track where the succession of multiple instruments reveals a solid structure and an equally valid arrangement. Follow the seductive "Salty Water" and "Let The Bitches Die."

Nothing is left to chance in these twelve invaluable tracks that undoubtedly elevate the quality of certain shy, secluded, and absolutely niche singer-songwriter music even though these terms don't seem very appropriate for Our Man (except for his most genuine attitude and "bedroom pop," easy sound approach) given that he is already recorded by the prestigious Domino Records, a label of Arctic Monkeys, Franz Ferdinand, The Kills, Animal Collective. The breeze of Bright Eyes, of the early Okkervil River finds no difficulty in blowing and it almost seems that Lightspeed Champion is here to show us that a future is possible even after Belle and Sebastian aided by Isobel Campbell; but who knows if it is then an obvious promise for the future?

Domino's bike is now his, now we have to see if it is a great hope or just another well-produced/well-packaged album.

Have you also fallen off the lavender bridge or into the most modern of traps?