Blood Orange Reveals: “My Music Always Offers a Comfort Space”

Seeing you collaborate with other artists left and right, one might wonder if you had given up on releasing a new album. Were you working on a successor to Negro Swan (2018) all these years?

Devonté Hynes — It’s always a bit unique with me because I’m constantly composing. I’m always working on a variety of projects, thinking that somehow, something will come of it. I don’t really focus on these questions. The only thing I considered at one point was: why does it need to be an album?

Also Read: Blood Orange Returns with “Essex Honey,” and It’s the Best Record of the Season

Good question. Yet, Essex Honey is indeed an album. What sparked this project?

There was a period when I listened a lot to Carrie & Lowell (2015) by Sufjan Stevens. I remember playing the song Fourth of July on repeat and thinking about the incredibly comforting power of music in tough times. It was a kind of boost. Just being able to make music and share it with others is a privilege. On this album, some tracks are over ten years old – they just needed vocals added –, others are five years old, like Westerberg, and most were written in the last two or three years. There’s always a moment during the process when I feel something taking shape. That’s when I focus more intensely on the album.

The common theme between Essex Honey and Carrie & Lowell is mourning. You lost your mother nearly three years ago, which gives this record the feel of a mourning journal, with a return to the traces of your youth in England, after years in New York, USA.

I spent a lot of time in London at that point in my life. After my mother’s death, I wanted to escape and the nearest city was Paris – I have more friends here anyway. So, a week after my stay in England, I took the Eurostar. I only had a small MIDI controller with me, and even though I didn’t really feel like composing, I forced myself. I recorded quite a few things that week, without thinking much about it, and eventually, these five tracks ended up on the album and became its core. So even though there are older songs on the record, for me, that was the real beginning.

“When you’re young, you learn other people’s songs, the ones you love, you try to reproduce them, to copy them.”

Is that why your writing is more direct, engaged with experience, and less metaphorical than before?

Possibly. Before, I would jot down words and thoughts throughout the day in a notebook and draw from it to write my song lyrics, which explains some of the abstract and metaphorical turns you’re talking about. But I’ve ended up moving away from that reservoir of lyrics; I write more following a stream of consciousness, over the music, which makes my songs more grounded in reality.

There is something very Proustian, a memory exercise and a look at your life as a young man and musician, in this record. Tracks like Westerberg and Vivid Light are as much a narrative of learning as they are a tribute to other people’s songs and a way to say goodbye to your youth.

That’s very accurate. I wanted to pay homage to music itself. When you’re young, you learn other people’s songs, the ones you love, you try to reproduce them, to copy them. That’s how I trained myself, at least, and it’s an important part of your development. I must have been 15 or 16 when my friend Ben played me the Replacements [the band of Paul Westerberg, ed]. I think it was Tim (1985). It really spoke to me. The writing was crazy, the energy insane. With these songs, I wanted to honor those moments.

Have you come to reconsider your own songs and the impact they can have on others?

I think I’m looking for immediacy more than before. I’ve always wanted my music to remain accessible, but I have a complex mind, which doesn’t always operate like that [laughs]. So it never resulted in big pop songs. But now, I want the message to be clear, understandable. We tend to think that because it’s blurry and a bit obscure, it’s art. I’ve always been interested in the opposite: something that has depth, artistic, but presented in a form that’s easy to absorb.

“Many of my friends were shocked to learn that I only have two guitars at home.”

Was pop what you were looking for when you were young?

When you’re a teenager, unless an older sibling or a parent guides you, your first entry into culture is not the obscure corners of music or cinema. You always get to those margins through something more accessible, more pop. I always keep that in mind: I seek to find that form, that shell that will make the experience easier and more accessible, for me and for others.

Do you often think back to those times when, in your room, you used to play the Smiths’ songs on guitar?

It’s true that there are a lot of guitars on this record, which was also the case on the first one. I naturally came back to it. Many of my friends were shocked to learn that I only have two guitars at home, one of which is languishing somewhere in a storeroom.

So, you effectively only have one guitar, right?

[Laughs] Yes, and ultimately I only use it when I need to make music, not like some who always strum a bit every day. When I was younger, I didn’t necessarily have the means to buy many instruments. I got a guitar for my birthday once. I also played the cello thanks to a school program: as long as you stayed in school, you had one, but you had to return it at the end of the year. My relationship with instruments has never changed since: I only bring out the guitar when I need to record. There’s a positive side to it, but also a limitation. For this album, I wanted to fight against that habit: I relearned pieces like I did as a teenager – Smiths’ songs, in particular, or just things that had been in my head for a long time.

“For the last one, I had these words in mind, Essex and honey. I’ve known for a long time that they would form a title, without really knowing what it would mean.”

Blood Orange’s albums have always been deeply rooted in your adopted city, New York.

That’s interesting, indeed. If you take an album like Cupid Deluxe (2013), it casts an amazed look at the city, almost naive; I was discovering the hidden playgrounds, the streets. I was excited in a way, and I think you can hear it. Freetown Sound (2016) is something else. It’s the record of someone more settled, rooted in that place, while Negro Swan (2018) took a broader look at America. The irony of things is that I always have the titles of my albums before they are even composed and recorded. For the last one, I had these words in mind, Essex and Honey. I’ve known for a long time that they would form a title, without really knowing what it would mean. And ultimately, it perfectly accounts for my life recently.

For this record, you returned to Ilford, in Essex, where you grew up. It’s a place you’ve already mentioned in other tracks.

Yes, it’s a special place, which I’ve already mentioned in some songs, like Dagenham Dream which talks about it directly. But I had never really gone there head-on in my music. Ilford isn’t exactly a beautiful place, it’s not pleasant. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that it was the place that shaped me. Moving away from the place where I grew up, I found myself taking stock of the layout of that place, its cartography, and the space I occupied there. It brought me back to that intimate way I had of playing music, for instance. It was a very private activity for me, people around me didn’t know I made music. It was only later that I started recording stuff with other people I met at the skate park.

Is that where you met the guys from Test Icicles?

Actually, no. I met them in an indie club in central London when I was 16 or 17. But at that time, I used to skate a lot with these guys, yes. I would go there, but often left alone. I was that kind of teenager. It was a pivotal time in my life, I was wondering which path I would pursue. I think that’s when I realized I wasn’t going to continue with football, for example.

You are indeed a Tottenham supporter!

Exactly! Thomas Frank! [Coach of the team, ed]

“I discovered that the common thread in my life had always been music.”

Apart from football, what mattered in your life then?

Skating, music, and football. Skating really took up a lot of space, I loved it. And at the same time, I was really into cinema and literature, as part of my studies – I was obsessed with these disciplines. Eventually, I quit everything: football, school. I needed to clear my head and think. I discovered that the common thread in my life had always been music. A few years later, I realized that it was the basis of everything for me. I still love cinema, of course, and writing, but I use music as a vehicle for expressing my writing and videos to stay connected to images. In fact, music has become the glue that holds everything together.

What were your favorite books and films when you were a teenager?

I’ve always had a huge passion for Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, by Mary Shelley.

That’s not surprising: your albums also resemble creatures made of composite parts, very patchwork.

True! Nevertheless, it left a big mark on me, because even if the narrative is a bit peculiar in its construction, I’ve always liked the fact that it’s not linear – just like my records, in the end. When I was younger, I also loved H.G. Wells, especially The Invisible Man. Later, during my studies, I discovered Sarah Kane, who died very young and was from Essex, by the way. I remember an adaptation of one of her plays, on Channel 4. I also liked Irvine Welsh, and Alex Garland — when The Beach (1996) came out, I was a teenager and I loved it. I entered literature through British writers. I didn’t discover American authors until my early twenties when I moved to New York.

Do you remember wanting to leave your hometown when you were younger?

Yes, I wanted to leave. But it’s funny because I discovered as I grew up that there were many people I admired who were from there, like David Beckham, my absolute idol, and he came from the same area as me. And then there’s Depeche Mode, The Prodigy, Iron Maiden, Stereolab, Underworld… All are from Essex. I started to think: “They come from there, and so do I, it’s not such a bad place after all.” It gradually became ingrained in me.

“Even if you’re a bit ashamed of where you come from, you still want to take it back and find the narrative to turn it into something more desirable and livable.”

When did your way of considering this place where you grew up change?

I actually have to pay tribute to my friend George Barnett, from the band These New Puritans, who is also from Essex. I went back to London for his birthday, three or four years ago, and he told me about a book written by one of his friends, Tim Burrows, which he called The Invention of Essex: The Making of an English County. I was literally absorbed by this book, which accounts for all the nuances of this place that is both vulgar, popular, where you feel the weight of being socially ostracized. And at the same time, you understand through these lines that there is a real desire to reclaim this space. It’s ultimately a pretty faithful mirror of England in general.

[He shows me the cover of the book, with an illustration reminiscent of the paintings of English landscape artist John Constable.]

What parallels do you draw between Essex and recent English history?

When I talk about reclamation, I’m referring to the fact that even if you’re a bit ashamed of where you come from, you still want to take it back and find the narrative to turn it into something more desirable and livable. It’s the same thing for Britain in general: its history is extremely cruel, and at the same time, England has offered artistic objects to the world of incredible beauty. When I think back to those images of British soldiers pointing their guns at children in Northern Ireland in the 1970s, I realize that it’s not so far from us, after all. Essex is a bit the same. The British National Party consistently comes first in elections. Growing up there, it was public knowledge that if you saw a pub displaying a British flag, you had to cross the street. In any case, I never walked past. Nevertheless, I always strive to find the positive and make something of it. I take what I can to turn it into something better. Essex Honey comes from there: the idea of extracting sweetness from beneath the surface of things.

Hope has often been a theme in your music. Do you ever lose faith in its power?

The world will always be somewhat off-kilter in one way or another. But it’s less about hope than about comfort in my music. I prefer to look at it that way. I’ve always thought that Blood Orange records should be listened to on headphones. It’s an intimate, albeit not solitary, experience. Even though my view of the world may be dark in places, I believe there’s always that space of comfort in my music.

Album: Essex Honey (RCA Records/Sony Music)
Concert: November 3, at the Olympia, as part of the Pitchfork Music Festival Paris.