🔗 Share this article Fifty Greatest Albums of 2025: No 3 – Dev Hynes: A Record of Grief This year's most celebrated records are filled with a sense of mourning. Considering the clear and disheartening split with leadership answerability, safeguards for minority groups, and the encroachment of artificial intelligence into creative fields, this artistic focus is hardly surprising. As performers including Anna von Hausswolff and another renowned singer aimed for elevation, and acts like Bad Bunny and KeiyaA delivered resistance anthems, Dev Hynes offers a profoundly individual contemplation on sorrow. An Intimate Navigation of Bereavement Dev Hynes' latest full-length work as his musical alias feels uniquely attuned to the scattered, distracted mental landscape that comes after the passing of a family member. Named Essex Honey, its agitated essence is captured in its raw introductory lyrics. These words could be read as juxtaposing the departing's acceptance with the survivor's struggle to grasp it: “By your grace, I sought some purpose,” Hynes intones. “Yet I discovered nothing, and I persist in hunting for a certainty.” “Each track is shrouded in a nostalgic light, and flows the way the thoughts does.” Musical Landscapes of Questing This search is expansive. The album refashions a classic indie track into a propulsive anthem. Elsewhere, sharp angular rock tracks simmer with ire. A plainly emotional collaboration stands against laid-back, flute-laced groove. Hynes' concentration moves during particular pieces, frequently to discomfiting effect. Without warning, a percussive pattern will crash in and stir up lush orchestration. Vivid Light: Includes a team-up with a famous author. Thinking Clean: Opens with staccato entreaties and awkward piano before transitioning into beautiful four-on-the-floor rhythm. Recurring Motifs: Harsh cello patterns recur over the record, like unexpected jolts back to anguish. Naturalistic Beauty If you let it surround you, the album progresses like elements shifting past a window. For all its harsh opposites, it feels gorgeously organic. This is achieved not only through real-world wisps of field recordings—seagull cries, television clips, family talk—but due to the artist's mastery as an arranger. Tunes paradoxically sound both offhand and immaculately crafted. A Chorus of Guests He doesn’t often voice tracks by himself. The album's stellar collaborators is a testament to a network cultivated over two decades in the scene. Yet these singers are not employed for mere spectacle; they act more like patchwork pieces in a beautifully comfortable tapestry, serving as foundation and to externalise hopeless sentiments. A recurring voice: Offers an ethereal quality with a clear falsetto. A different featured artist: Leverages a distinctive huskiness to portray someone fraying at the seams. Vocal interplay: Sees the lead artist's deep voice mirroring the guest's, as an shadow self affirming darkest thoughts. The Final Surrender Essex Honey brushes up against a particular philosophy: when the most terrible thing has occurred, how can anything at all hold meaning? Hynes' suggestive verses constantly revisit the past, grasping to memories. He almost didn’t release the record, wondering its point. An understanding of privilege—the opportunity to present art with an audience—transformed its purpose. The last track concludes with a reflection of the initial words, feeling like a acceptance to the permanent. The startling and instinctive album documents the feeling of a life reconfigured, mapping its painful new contours with beauty.