Live Review

Lightspeed Champion – Deaf Institute, Manchester

• 17th May 2010

In a venue that’s half-theatre/half-disco hall, The Deaf Institute, Lightspeed Champion A.K.A Dev Hynes showcased his reluctant icon status with the impeccable beauty that has come to mark his second dip into the music industry. His first project was with cult-band Test Icicles whose garage driven anti-Punk provided more hip teenagers with the chance to jump around and shout “Sharks” than a teenage only trip to the beach postponed because of the amount of sharks clipping at their pale ankles and chewing at their arms.

Now though, Dev has settled into a downtrodden genre of his own, a world away from his chaotic past, this genre, in which lost misanthropy collides with giddy melody and lovely eyeglasses, has confirmed his transition from Test Icicle to Best Bifocal. Complete with a sumptuous sound that is a world away from any other pretenders to the art of grand-misery, Dev has become the poster boy for the post-Indie generation; a title that the humble star would be quick to rebuff but foolish to reject – with his second album and his first touring dates for almost 3 years, Lightspeed has picked up a new pace and a shinier glow and looks to be settling in to life as the King of calming sadness.

Though he looks like he’s from New York, with his Yankees cap, rolled up shirt, tiny trousers and battered shoes, he sings like he’s from heartbreak. Songs drop like stars into a dumpster, sparkling wit and confidence resigned to a mundane life of loneliness – his juxtaposition between the beautiful and the bastardised is best summed up in the brilliant line of “sketchy motherfucker” which if it were sang in any other language and backed up by the considerable joy of the composition would sound like a call of love and a hymn of hope; with Lightspeed Champion though, it sounds exactly as it should; a confusing curse at someone whose ignorance and arrogance can only be explained through the explosion of the soul.

This soul explosion and heart revealing is a central point of a Lightspeed Champion concert – at times, it’s not like listening to a recording artist, but inspired monologues from a travelling Grandad who has returned more in love and with an empty suitcase – weary and wasted from a seemingly perpetual lack of luck in love, the endearing dazzle of Dev’s smile that marks the beginning and end of each chapter (after all, a Lightspeed Champion show is a novel; complex and exciting) is a welcome insight into how proud Dev must be of his ever expanding and always critically acclaimed career.

It’s not all hopeful melancholy though and there are clear signs that Dev’s Test Icicle spirit has not wavered, only this time around, he’s not thrashing his guitar with the audacity of youth, instead he’s rocking with it and twisting with it; like Little Richard in a cap – Dev and his band convey a nostalgic nod to 50’s High School Balls. Imagine how different “Grease” would have been if Dev was up there singing as Danny left Sandy for the outrageously annoying Latino-freak. I hate to tarnish the name of “Grease” but it would have been better, much better.

In a set that covers The Beach Boys in a way that can only be described as A-FUCK-MA-FUCK-ZING, (a journalistic first, I believe) manages to confirm Dev as the boy-most-likely-to-look-shy-after-being-invited-back-for-an-encore and established his initials (D.H) as far more important than those of D.H. Lawrence or Damien Hurst due to the fact that Lightspeed Champion manages much more than erotic tales or modern art for they mix the two, into one recipe of shotgun sentiment; blowing the cobwebs out of the choice genre of “orchestral moaning” and converting it into mind blowing honesty.

Just like Dylan went electric, Dev has gone eccentric and with more albums, touring and singles on the horizon, the future looks as bright for Dev, who I got a chance to speak to after the show. He confided in me how long he’d been writing songs for; since the age of twelve, how the secret to success is telling your friends to tell their theirs and telling them to tell the internet and how his preference of America over Britain was hanging on the election result, sighing that “Cameron will probably get in” he exuded the attitude of ambitious outsider and proved tellingly unique but ostensibly human, posing for pictures and autographs and selling his own merchandise.

If the new Con-Dem coalition does manage to force Lightspeed Champion across the pond, Britain should know what it’s losing; it will be saying bye to an authentic representation of modern Britain. It will be losing the genre-crossing genius of Lightspeed Champion and the sadistic, sarcastic and deadpan delivery of Dev Hynes. It will be losing one of the most enigmatic and potentially one the most important recording artists of the decade. It will be losing a man on the brink of super-stardom and on the cusp of all his dreams. We could lose the next Morrissey and God knows, we’ll need them both if the country goes to rack and ruin.

Bloody Tories, letting the physical embodiment of desperate happiness slip from our grasp.

Don’t go Dev, the country won’t be the same without you.