Lightspeed Champion - Daydream Believer

As he peers down the lens of a tiny handheld video camera, tenderly flicking the pages of a glossy comic book, Devonte Hynes is in his element. He’s talking about what he later describes over a cup of peppermint tea as his “favourite intake of information”: comics. If London’s Forbidden Planet had a stereotypical customer, then today Hynes may just be it. In his trademark woollen hat, thick rimmed prescription glasses and rainbow coloured jumper, he looks, and is, the ultimate enthusiast.

“I think, when I was younger,” he says, whilst pouring an alarming amount of sugar into his tea, “there was a comic book store near my school, so at lunchtime, then after school, I’d go there...” Hynes comes to a sudden stop, the sugar dispenser held in suspense over his cup. “God I hope this is sugar,” he .phps. “God I’m really bad at doing that, I really hope it is.” I promise him it is, picking up the adjacent salt shaker to reassure him. Looking relieved, he continues pouring.

Hynes is as engaging to talk to in the flesh as he is to watch during his live performances as Lightspeed Champion: his sometimes solo, sometimes band pseudonym. Whilst he was at the Shaftsbury Avenue chain of Forbidden Planet - where he’s a regular enough visitor to recognise the manager with whom he has only been formerly introduced to for the first time today - to film a spot for his record company, Domino, he’s talking to me in a cafe over the road about Lightspeed Champion’s debut album, ‘From Under The Lavender Bridge’, which is out later this month.

One of 2008’s most anticipated releases, from one of 2008’s most anticipated artists, ‘From Under The Lavender Bridge’ is an album of quaint country melodies and fiddly warm guitar solos which are often juxtaposed with lyrics which are quite the opposite. “I didn’t intentionally plan it but I’m kind of glad it happened,” says Hynes about the albums’ juxtapositions, which are perhaps most evident in the song, ‘Galaxy Of The Lost’, which contains the line: “Guzzle down, My neck will burn as we kiss and I’m sick in your mouth / I know you want more.” Hynes continues: “I’ve always been a big fan of that kind of thing because it really shows, I feel, what people take when they listen to music, do you know what I mean? Because there are some songs which are quite big and people seem to ignore the lyrics – it might be the melody and chorus or whatever – and then there are some people who love songs because of lyrics, so I try and suck everything in.”

Although the album and its city tales of romance, hangovers and sexual frustration was mostly penned in London, it was recorded in Hynes’ native America alongside Bright Eyes comrade Mike Mogis. It was in Mogis’ studio in Omaha last year where ‘From Under The Lavender Bridge’ finally came together – nearly three years after Hynes first began writing the songs which would eventually appear on it. “It’s weird I lived at three different locations between during when this album was written and recorded. I was in these places for a long time in my life. I lived in Whitechapel for a couple of years; I lived in Chiswick for a year and I’ve lived in Dalston for the last year and a half. I’d lived in Dalston for half a year before I recorded the album. So all those places and different mind frames, I guess you can hear them on the album, which is quite strange.”

Hynes was born in Houston, Texas, but as his previous declaration shows, he’s lived somewhat of a nomadic life. From America his family moved to Edinburgh before eventually calling the London suburb of Essex home. Listing off all the towns of Essex he’s lived in, Hynes says he left school at 16 because he “needed to get out somewhat.” As he embarked on a new found independence in London, which was supplemented by “various horrible jobs” including cleaning, one thing, or to be more precise, unfathomable love, remained constant: music.

“Yeah, the weird thing is that, I was talking to someone the other day, it’s never something I’ve wanted to do as a living,” he says, with his usual guileless sentiment. “It’s such a love of mine – it’s never something I’d thought about [doing for a living]. I used to make albums in my bedroom all through school and I’d give them to my friends and people who wanted them, but I never sent anything to a record company and I rarely played gigs. I was in a few bands, even now, the gig side of things really bother me. I’ve never been a big fan of the whole live thing.”