Life is Sweet! Nice To Meet You

Life is Sweet! Nice to Meet You continues where Devonté Hynes left off after releasing his first folk-oriented album, which came as a surprise to those familiar with the output of his previous short-lived dance-punk band “Test Icicles”. After successfully blending metal, hardcore and pop and then creating a folksy singer-songwriter album under the pseudonym of Lightspeed Champion in Omaha, Hynes tries his hand at further experimentation whilst moving closer to the mainstream.

This time around the songs are louder, not quite as laid-back as on his debut, and show the amount of time invested in arrangement and composition whilst Hynes was rendered unable to sing due to vocal cord problems. The dreamy piano and guitar at the beginning of ‘Dead Head Blues’ would fit in quite well on the previous record, but are then suddenly interrupted by thumping drums and a synthesizer solo.

Hynes has apparently taking a liking to keys and the piano in particular, and has them playing a prominent part on many songs, such as the pleading ‘I Don’t Want to Wake Up Alone’ with its rousing male choir or ‘The Big Guns of Highsmith’. Likewise, they feature on the etude ‘Goodnight Michalek’, but this track seems sounds out of place and amateurish.

On the first single of the album, ‘Marlene’, a groovy bass line and catchy guitar melodies venture into the terrain of danceable funk, ornamented with violin flourishes and a bright triangle on the offbeat. The songs tend to be quite elaborate and draw on a multitude of influences. This blend of genres often leads to good results, such as the western-inspired ‘Sweetheart’, the ukulele-driven indie-ballad ‘There’s Nothing Underwater’, and the relaxed jazz of ‘Smooth Day’, but there is the danger that they come close to sounding overloaded. A prime exponent of this would be ‘The Big Guns of Highsmith’.

After starting off with baroque piano, a Greek choir enters imploring Hynes to “stop complaining” before being superseded by a spacey synthesizer interlude. The air of disjointedness exemplified by this song hangs over the whole album, with Hynes trying his hand at too much at once. Linking the songs up with two interludes doesn’t quite pull of the trick of giving it coherence.

The lyrical dreariness is also irritating, featuring lines that even Morrissey would have decided too theatrical. The theme of loss and yearning gets a bit tiresome by time of ‘Madame Van Damme’ and its overly repetitive cries of “Kill me, baby won’t you kill me.”

Life is Sweet! Nice to Meet You does not quite match up to Falling Off Lavender Bridge, but nonetheless showcases its creator’s impressively wide range of talents and ability to write good songs, even if at times these veer off into the overly theatrical.