Lightspeed Champion - Bye Bye

In the build-up to this EP, much anticipation centred around the idea of ‘opulent strings and lush instrumentation’. While they are undeniably there, thanks to the help of legendary producer Van Dyke Parks, maybe the question should have been asked of whether this would suit Dev Hynes, Lightspeed Champion, himself?

‘Bye Bye’ feels like an obsessive pursuit of Van Dyke Parks’ style at its most extreme to the utter detriment of the music. The best illustration of this is ‘Underwater There Is Nothing’, a track from Lightspeed Champion’s last album, which is stripped to the bones only for the skeleton to promptly fall to the floor and disintegrate. The third and fourth tracks are demonstrations of grand and historical sounding instrumentation with Lightspeed Champion barely managing to peek his eyes above them, the very highpoint being a ‘Young Folks’-ish whistle. Where once he seemed a gentle man with unusual delicacy and attention to detail, now he is lost under the weight of admiration and the string section it brings with it. Lightspeed Champion was never meant to stand out beyond a huge group of backing musicians, power just wasn’t his game.

I guess you could argue I haven’t “got it”, but this EP offers, in only four tracks, two definite points of reference and both pale in significance to their source material, leaving you feeling embarrassed for ever countenancing the comparison. What they’ve done to a classic, in The Beach Boys’ ‘Til’ I Die’, is unfathomably bad. The process of taking a sure-fire anthem, practically verdant with harmony and melody, and making it sound like a Flaming Lips B-side seeming almost impossible until now. This EP has barely any merit, and certainly not enough to stop it only diminishing the positive impression of Lightspeed Champion many of us had. Perhaps he would have been better leaving without saying goodbye at all.