Dev Hynes returns as Blood Orange with Essex Honey, his first full-length album in six years, and it’s a project steeped in memory, loss, and the landscapes of his English childhood. Where his previous albums each carried a distinct sense of place Cupid Deluxe’s dreamy 1980s textures rooted in New York, Freetown Sound’s transatlantic exploration of Black identity, and Negro Swan’s intimate reckoning with queerness and heartbreak Essex Honey turns inward. It’s both a homecoming and a meditation, reckoning with grief following the passing of Hynes’ mother in 2023.

Musically, the album feels like wandering through a scrapbook blurred at the edges. Field recordings of Essex countryside mingle with abstract piano, jagged cello, and jittery percussion, while fleeting voices drift in like ghosts of memory. Guest appearances from Caroline Polachek, Lorde, Zadie Smith, and Mustafa enhance the textures without distracting from the intimacy. Their contributions float rather than dominate, mirroring the way memory layers voices and presences into one continuous flow.

The opener, The Field, immediately sets the tone—gentle vocals unfurl over swelling strings, its melancholy beauty drawing the listener into a world where joy and pain sit side by side. Later, The Last of England weaves in family recordings before blossoming into orchestral grandeur, transforming personal grief into something communal and almost cinematic.

What makes Essex Honey so affecting is not just its elegance but its restraint. Hynes resists the urge to overexplain, allowing silence, repetition, and texture to carry the weight of memory. The result is an album that feels less like a statement and more like an intimate confession.

In Essex Honey, Hynes offers his most delicate, autobiographical work yet a tender reflection on loss and belonging that lingers long after the final note fades.