Lightspeed Champion – Life Is Sweet! Nice To Meet You
February 16th, 2010
Domino Recording Company
Score: 5.5
One of the dangers of irony — and sincerity — is that too much of it becomes boring.
Devonte Haynes, under the moniker Lightspeed Champion, has made irony his calling card. To him, it’s not a front, nor a weakness — in fact, he consciously thrives on it. It’s what gives his music a layer that it otherwise wouldn’t have. Still, as his albums wear on, the pose he’s holding becomes more and more rigid, the songs duller. Thankfully, his nimble guitar work, syrupy melodies, and diverse stylistic palette keep things lively enough to save his work from residing permanently in the doldrums of self-consciousness. But as a listener, it’s difficult to become a part of his world, because he rarely creates an authentic opening.
His full-length debut as Lightspeed Champion, Falling Off The Lavender Bridge, contains lyrics awash with self-pity and turmoil but music bubbling with eclectic, playful melodrama. The follow-up, Life Is Sweet! Nice To Meet You, is a bit subtler, and consequently, more focused. It doesn’t scream “contradiction” so much as it wryly lingers around the idea, smirking just before abruptly changing the tempo or launching into a heroic crescendo.
This time around, there tends to be a closer proximity between the lyrics and the musical mise en scene, but sincerity never wins out. The opener ‘Deadhead Blues’ begins with somber piano and strings and Haynes crooning: “I know you’re happy, and that’s lovely/ But it won’t keep me complete.” But the song only builds from there, accruing loads of fuzzed-out bass and generally heading toward AOR-style, midtempo power ballad territory. That track, along with a number of others, like the lean dance-rocker (with a sweeping breakdown) ‘Marlene’, and the sneering ‘Romart’ are relatively pared down compared with Haynes’ early work, and indicative of a newfound restraint. There are still a range of sounds and styles at work here, as there were on the debut, but there’s less of an attempt to create a rock musician’s version of a mixtape mashup. At times, Falling Off… was like a kaleidoscope, with overlapping layers that didn’t always make sense but fit nicely. Life is Sweet… is more of a slideshow, with common elements — Queen, Broadway-like flair — running throughout distinct, separate scenes.
Haynes does indulge himself in other ways though. There are four instrumental tracks, two of which are titled “intermissions” and one of which is a piano etude. They’re bland and arbitrary enough to venture a guess that the only reason they exist on the album is to foster an image of Haynes as something of a composer type.
Despite these oddball tendencies and artistic shortcomings, when Haynes is on, he’s dead-on: smart, sardonic, and catchy as hell. One of his best moments is ‘Madame Van Damme’, with its peppy, rock n’ roll back beat driving through a deadpan chorus: “Kill me, baby, won’t ya kill me.” At times like this, it’s hard not to recall the spirit of Warren Zevon, dryly growling about his head on the tracks of the double E, or jauntily recalling tales of psychopathic homicide and rape, all the while backed up by silky-voiced singers, cooing “Ooh-wah-ooh, excitable boy.”
But Zevon knew something about irony and humor that Haynes doesn’t yet, at least not fully: don’t overdo it.
Tim McNulty