Blood Orange

Dev Hynes has a short attention span, or maybe multiple personalities. He's unable to stick with one musical project for very long, and so after a couple of albums as Lightspeed Champion, he returns with new pseudonym Blood Orange, his '80s project. Unfortunately, Coastal Grooves isn't as interesting as his work in Lightspeed Champion or even Test Icicles, falling flat in a way that suggests he's just seeing if the whole concept works before committing to it completely. And if he is testing the waters, that can be seen as a partial success simply because it does manage to sound very different from anything he's done in the past. At its best it sounds like a less polished Twin Shadow and when it stays close to the dance floor there's something rather appealing about what Hynes does. But there's too much confusion amongst the ten songs to recommend what is an album that is as musically confused as its maker.