Lightspeed Champion - Falling Off The Lavender Bridge

Having garnered critical praise for the unruly din his former band Test Icicles made, Dev Hynes decided he didn’t like all that blaring mischievousness after all. The result is another new musical identity, another rubbish name, but surprisingly not another shoddy album.

It seems Hynes was hiding an aptitude for melody all along. Falling Off The Lavender Bridge is considered; glossy but understated, a seemingly light listen, yet resonant. Perhaps the source of this thoughtfulness is producer and long-time Bright Eyes collaborator Mike Mogis. Lightspeed Champion doesn’t reproduce anything like the juvenile profundity Conor Oberst sometimes conjures, but he picks up the country-tinged romanticism and shattering simplicity.

It slides towards flimsiness at times, notably on the pointless 72 seconds of ‘All To Shit.’ and the clunky piano of ‘Salty Water.’ It makes no attempts at innovation musically, and is lyrically rooted in the present. This is an album for the generation that will get the references to The OC, and not squeam at lines like “Wake up and smell the semen.”

However, it is most outrageous in its inoffensiveness. If you’re expecting the cutting edge of cool, Lightspeed Champion isn’t it. Sure, he names a track ‘Let The Bitches Die’, but generally he’s heartfelt, sincere and pretty wholesome. Your mum would listen to the likes of ‘No Surprise,’ if she ever takes Michael Buble off repeat.

The possibility of commercial success is there in ‘Tell Me What It’s Worth’, the kind of hysterically likeable tune that perforates your skin on repeat listens. But the album’s real vigour lies in ‘Midnight Surprise’, a decadent 10-minute voyage full of pensive sadness and weighted irony. It revels in its own inconsistencies, an emotive frolic that captures the feel of this loveably self-indulgent record.

The album invites few conclusions, but is an intriguing insight into a bemusing man. After trawling along in projects his heart wasn’t in, he seems to have found some purpose in these songs. They aren’t masterpieces, they’re easily dismissed portions of pop more easy to discard than find. But if you’ve got the time and inclination, it’s worth persevering.