Lady Gaga is incredible!” enthuses Lightspeed Champion down the phone. “Bad Romance is, like, the best song of the year – I can’t believe how good that song is!”
Only a few minutes into the interview and we are already discussing Lightspeed Champion’s obsession with pop. “I think pop music is the best it’s been in a long while” he continues. “Music is made for making people happy. There’s no point over-analysing it; if you like something just listen and enjoy it.”
This might once have seemed a surprising statement from a former Test Icicle, the noisy indie band with distortion pedal set to full throttle, but with two albums of pure melodic magic under his belt, it is no surprise where Lightspeed Champion’s ambitions lie.
New album Life Is Sweet! Nice To Meet You is an ambitious LP and could be considered the first classic of 2010. Lightspeed Champion, aka Devonte Hynes, has created an album overflowing with ideas, genres, and most importantly melody. “It’s in four parts and totally over the top” explains Dev unabashedly. “I always want to get the best melody. I think I fail a lot, but it’s what I strive for!
- Dev in former band Test Icicles
Dev first came under the spotlight in the mid-noughties with previous band Testicicles -a noisy mash-up of thrash and punk. But after a couple of years, the group split with Dev famously declaring that they never even liked their songs. Most would have resigned the band to the ‘flash in the pan hyped up band for trendy hipsters’ pile, and none would have foreseen what one of the band members did next.
In 2008, with little hype, Dev released an album of country tinged melodic masterpieces. The album was critically applauded and received well in the indie community. Dev was surprised by the success, “I didn’t think anyone would hear the songs. I’ve just been doing the same stuff I’ve done for years. I sit in my bedroom and record, and then I just send it off to people to hear.“
Unsurprisingly, the reaction was to pigeonhole him as the UK’s answer to Bright Eyes. Dev chuckles when he remembers this “I found it really funny, because everyone thought that was all I did. To me it’s just one of seven albums I did in that time. I’m constantly writing.”
Dev certainly keeps himself busy and Lightspeed Champion is just one of his many guises. He has already recorded another album under the name Blood Orange, released a comic book, and written a collection of short stories. He is even contemplating branching into journalism. “I’ve done a load of writing in the last few years. I’m a total movie buff, I like writing movie reviews.”
The busiest man in indie-pop has accomplished a lot for a 24 year old. Yet his constant work and moving left Dev lost and he decided to move to New York, “It just felt time to go. I hadn’t been living in London for a while and so I needed to find out where home is.”
He’s not the only one to head across the Atlantic. New York seems to have become the vogue place to relocate for an indie star of the mid-noughties wanting to distance themselves from their roots. A certain Arctic Monkey has also made the move… “Alex Turner lives five minutes from me, we meet up all the time. They also used the Brooklyn studio I recorded in when they did their sessions with James Ford.”
- Dev’s first NME cover
Fortunately, some might say, the move to the US didn’t have quite the same influence as the Arctic Monkeys third effort, Humbug – an album where Alex Turner’s lyrics changed from witty and personal to obscure and wishy-washy. “Yeah, I know what you mean,” Dev agrees, explaining his simple approach to writing lyrics. “I try not to put too much effort into it. Whether I spend five minutes or two months on a song lyrically, it’s just going to get worse! I know the point I ‘m trying to get across, so the longer I spend on it the worse it will get. I just try to get it out there and so as a result, the lyrics are more personal than if I sat down and really thought about it.”
This is certainly in contrast to the music, which is detailed and expertly crafted. So who influenced the album? “I’m obsessed with Serge Gainsbourg, Todd Rungden, Neil Young, and especially Cyndi Lauper. Cyndi lauper is a big, big idol of mine. She isn’t a guilty pleasure, to me she is just as credible as the rest.”
The current music world would most probably echo his sentiments. Pop has come back with a bang and, yet again, we chat about the pop world. “I think for a while, there was a very strict formula from the mid-90s to recent times. This year, I think we are getting back to people writing really good and pretty weird songs that are becoming really huge hits. But I think it’s done so slyly that people don’t really notice. It’s cool that risks in pop music are being taken again, and people are actually trying to write good songs.”
But what about the X Factor and the commercial side to pop? “I look at things from a song point of view. My mind doesn’t think about corporations and people trying to make money – people have always been trying to make money from music. I just see it in a completely musical way.”
Perhaps this is the key to Lightspeed Champion’s success. His shameless devotion to melody and lack of pretension have helped him create an album that is pure pop, and better for it.