In your grace, I looked for some meaning - but I found none

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's 50 best albums of 2025.

#3 : Essex Honey - Blood Orange

Dev Hynes’ fifth album as Blood Orange felt uniquely keyed into the fragmented, distracted headspace that comes after someone passes, in his case, his mother. Essex Honey’s restive nature was summed up in its painful opening lines, which you could read as the dying’s acceptance of death starkly contrasting the living’s ability to meet them on those terms: “In your grace, I looked for some meaning,” Hynes sings on Look at You. “But I found none, and I still search for a truth.” That search is wide-reaching: The Field refashions the Durutti Column’s Sing to Me as a racing hymnal made for the stereo of a Ford Escort. There are tough little Robert Rental-style post-punk gems in The Train (Kings Cross) and Countryside that bristle with frustration. Vivid Light is a plainly soulful duet with Zadie Smith; Life, featuring Tirzah’s unmistakable vocals, basks in languid, flute-dappled funk.

The 23rd album I've previously heard and when I met it as a new entry, I didn't mind it but had no idea how to describe it - I went for "ambient jazz trip-hop". And, of course, I don't remember it in the slightest so let's see what I think of it now.

Ah yes, that old ambient jazz trip-hop sound. It kinda meanders along in an undefinable way but I actually didn't mind it at all on second listen and it's got some nice sounds on it. Like Sombr, which was equally hard to describe, I think I was more intrigued by it than actively enjoying it but I thought it was a worthwhile listen. I like the album cover as well. 

This obviously made the charts, but only had the one week at #69 to show for it. The Wikipedia entry tells us it's his fifth album as Blood Orange - he's also done two as Lightspeed Champion and seven soundtrack albums as Devonté Hynes including Queen & Slim, which he obviously did a good job on because I specifically namechecked him (and that very rarely happens). He also seems to have a diverse selection of pretty famous friends because this album features guest appearances from The Durutti Column, Caroline Polachek, Lorde, Ben Watt (from EBTG), Zadie Smith and Mabe Fratti (who we met previously on this list) amongst many, many others. Critically, it was very well received and commercially it charted in more countries than you'd expect, but often in the very low reaches of the chart, although it did get to #33 in New Zealand.

discogs.com is offering a couple of signed versions and you're going to have to spend £110 to get your hands on one of them. I feel I can probably live without dropping that much cash on it, but this was an interesting listen and I can see why the critics loved it - I suspect careful listening will pull out quite a bit more detail. So let''s continue the real name tradition and congratulate Devonté Hynes for winning the album of the round.

#4 - I remain mystified by the appeal