Completely departing from his first LP, Dev Hynes, a.k.a. Lightspeed Champion has put out the beautifully composed Life is Sweet! Nice to Meet You, consisting of light and lovely folk and strong driving indie rock.
I’ll have to admit that I wasn’t crazy about Hynes’ debut 2008’s Falling Off The Lavender Bridge, but here he’s loaded his songs with more instrumentals and deeper harmonies. The album as a whole fits together very well, and there aren’t any songs that stick out. Every song feels like it needs to be there to make the album work as well as it does, interludes and all. You’d never think that Hynes had throat surgery that delayed this release, because it sounds delightfully smooth and lilting; and just as good, if not better, than on Falling Off The Lavender Bridge.
Starting with the melancholy “Dead Head Blues,” and into the hook-heavy “Marlene,” Hynes brings in the dance hall guitar riffs with the classical strings, and they don’t clash at all. In fact, Hynes breaks into a full-on Etude on track 13 with “Goodnight Michalek,” a less-than two minute ditty that sounds like it was meant for a Wes Anderson film soundtrack.
One of my favorites on the album, “The Big Guns of Highsmith,” also employs the classical piano, but a charming question-answer chorus of “it hurts to be the one who’s always feeling sad / oh just stop complaining!” It’s lyrics like that that keeps Life is Sweet! Nice to Meet You interesting and makes you want to come back for another listen. Another of my favorites is the 50s swing-inspired pop song “Madame Van Damme,” that proclaims several times throughout the song “kill me baby, won’t you kill me?” A terribly desperate question, but sung in such a matter-of-fact and cheery way demands like I listen to it over and over again. It takes a few to get over the irony of such an upbeat song, but it’s catchy, so that’s just fine with me to listen a dozen or so times.
At the halfway mark, Hynes slows it down with “Romart,” an earnest ballad that’s so big that you almost feel like it belongs in a renaissance fairytale, but a contemporary one. The other ballad on the album, “Smooth Day (At the Library),” is jazzy and almost gloomy, but still romantic enough not to be depressing.
It was nice to have more than ten songs on this album, as it’s been the number of tracks I’ve seen lately on most new albums. Having fifteen tracks also added to the operatic feel of Life is Sweet! Nice to Meet You, slightly reminiscent of The Decemberists, with the folk storytelling with instrumental intermissions throughout the album.
The quirky lyrics and vast arrangements make Life is Sweet! Nice to Meet You a great release from Lightspeed Chamption – surely the best effort from him yet. And added to his already eccentric stage persona, I’m thinking that it will make for an interesting live show.
Track List:
1. Dead Head Blues
2. Marlene
3. There’s Nothing Underwater
4. Intermission
5. Faculty of Fears
6. The Big Guns of Highsmith
7. Romart
8. I Don’t Want to Wake Up Alone
9. Madame Van Damme
10. Smooth Day (at the Library)
11. Intermission 2
12. Sweetheart
13. Etude Op.3 ‘Goodnight Michalek’
14. Middle of the Dark
15. A Bridge and a Goodbye
