🔗 Share this article

This year's most celebrated collections are permeated with a sense of loss. Given the clear and disheartening split with government accountability, defenses of vulnerable communities, and the intrusion of AI into creative fields, this musical preoccupation is hardly surprising. As performers including one acclaimed artist and Rosalía sought transcendence, and others a global superstar and an innovative producer created resistance anthems, Dev Hynes delivers a intimately private meditation on mourning.

A Personal Journey Through Loss

The artist's fifth album as his musical alias feels uniquely keyed into the fragmented, unfocused headspace that comes after the passing of a loved one. Named the album, its restive nature is encapsulated in its aching introductory lyrics. These lyrics might be interpreted as juxtaposing the dying's peace with the survivor's difficulty to comprehend it: “In your grace, I sought some meaning,” the singer sings. “Yet I discovered nothing, and I still search for a certainty.”

“All the music is shrouded in a nostalgic light, and flows the way the thoughts does.”

Artistic Landscapes of Seeking

This exploration is far-flung. The album refashions a classic indie song into a racing hymnal. Elsewhere, sharp angular rock tracks bristle with frustration. A plainly emotional duet differs from laid-back, flute-laced funk. Hynes' concentration changes inside particular pieces, often to unsettling impact. Without warning, a breakbeat will burst in and stir up silky strings.

• One standout track: Includes a team-up with a famous novelist.
• Thinking Clean: Begins with staccato entreaties and jerky keys before spinning off into gorgeous four-on-the-floor rhythm.
• Common Threads: Dramatic string patterns recur throughout the album, like surprising jolts back to sorrow.

Lived-In Beauty

If you let it envelop you, the album moves like elements dancing past a window. For all its sharp contrasts, it feels profoundly naturalistic. This is accomplished not only through real-world hints of field recordings—seagull cries, television clips, intimate discussions—but due to Hynes' mastery as an composer. Harmonies paradoxically sound at once offhand and exquisitely crafted.

A Chorus of Guests

Hynes seldom voice tracks by himself. The record's stellar collaborators is a proof of a network developed over two decades in the scene. But these artists are not deployed ostentatiously; they act more like integral parts in a beautifully well-worn fabric, there as support and to externalise hopeless feelings.

1. A recurring voice: Provides an angelic quality with a pure high register.
2. Another notable appearance: Uses a youthful rasp to convey someone coming apart at the margins.
3. Vocal interplay: Sees the lead artist's resonant voice mirroring the guest's, as an underworld figure affirming deepest anxieties.

The Concluding Surrender

This work brushes up against a powerful philosophy: when the most terrible thing has happened, why does anything at all matter? The lyricist's impressionistic words keep looking back the past, holding on to moments. The artist came close to not releasing the album, doubting its point. A recognition of good luck—the opportunity to share music with an listeners—transformed its purpose. The final song finishes with a reflection of the first line, sounding like a surrender to the permanent. The stunning and intuitive record documents the feeling of a life altered, tracing its awful new contours with beauty.