Lightspeed Champion — Life Is Sweet! Nice To Meet You

Devonte Hynes' 2008 Falling Off The Lavender Bridge debut as Lightspeed Champion was a critically-acclaimed effort because it was a huge step away from his past with Test Icicles, known for their abrasive, scream-filled dance-punk. That album was full of lush, delicate instrumentation backed with Hynes' until-then unknown penchants for both alt.country and classical music.

Life Is Sweet! Nice To Meet You is that record's follow-up, and it couldn't be more different. While Falling Off The Lavender Bridge should by all rights have failed miserably due to its multitude of styles (sometimes within the same song), Life Is Sweet! Nice To Meet You attempts to provide the listener with a more narrow indie pop focus. Unfortunately, it fails because its songs aren't strong enough.

Hynes is still writing about unrequited love, depression and the frustrations of modern romance. There's absolutely nothing wrong with mope rock, so long as it's executed well. While nothing's wrong with Hynes' lyrics, none of the tunes on Life Is Sweet — save first single "Marlene" — make any sort of an impact whatsoever on the listener.

The experimentations with more piano and keyboards are nice to hear, but they become kind of pointless when they don't carry the tunes anywhere.

Overall, Life Is Sweet! comes across as more of a series of sketches of ideas that aren't fully finished. They should have been developed further and perhaps shouldn't have been put to record in the first place.

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