Albums to watch

Essex Honey

Blood Orange

Essex Honey

Fifth album from Dev Hynes the multi-faceted singer-songwriter and producer behind Lightspeed Champion and Test Icicles

ADM rating[?]

8.1

Label
RCA
UK Release date
29/08/2025
US Release date
29/08/2025
  1. 10.0 |   The Guardian

    Gorgeous melodies ground Dev Hynes’s questing fifth album, via dancefloor rhythms, indie pop and languorous funk – and cameos from Lorde and Zadie Smith
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  2. 10.0 |   The Arts Desk

    It takes in all the avant-garde and otherwise out-there influences Hynes has encountered along his meandering way
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  3. 9.0 |   All Music

    A remarkable album with more gateways than a knowing mixtape, Essex Honey shows that Hynes is as ingenious as a would-be DJ, A&R, and talent connector as he is as a songwriter, producer, multi-instrumentalist, and singer
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  4. 9.0 |   musicOMH

    Dev Hynes translates themes of loss and grief into a compelling and ultimately uplifting musical whole
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  5. 8.1 |   Pitchfork

    Dev Hynes’ elegant new album, his first in six years, inhabits memories of an English childhood filled with joy, pain, and music
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  6. 8.0 |   Dork

    ‘Essex Honey’ is delicately constructed – immediately, there is a whirlwind of influences at work, but it never feels like a tug of war between them
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  7. 8.0 |   Rolling Stone

    Enigmatic U.K. musician Dev Hynes delivers a quietly intoxicating LP
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  8. 8.0 |   NME

    Dev Hynes’ sombre return explores the grief of hometown returns through his private all-star orchestra of pop music’s finest
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  9. 8.0 |   Clash

    Hynes doesn’t offer immediate catharsis or easy answers. Instead, he provides something equally valuable: an honest documentation of processing grief with such sophistication that his individual journey becomes widely resonant
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  10. 7.9 |   Paste Magazine

    Dev Hynes translates nebulous abstraction without veering into didacticism or appearing overwrought. In his hands, grief becomes amorphous, resisting cliche and expectations—much like the artist himself
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  11. 7.6 |   Northern Transmissions

    Hynes’ melodies and arranging experiments make for a replayable, effusive record whose insight comes in waves and poetry arrives in short, meaningful doses
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  12. 7.0 |   Slant Magazine

    The album explores loss and loneliness, but Dev Hynes finds ways to break through the fog
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  13. 7.0 |   The Quietus

    Essex Honey isn’t about England, it’s about the mourning Hynes experienced there. If there’s anything more complicated than country, it’s that
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