Overview

• NME and the Guardian publish positive reviews on Aug. 28, positioning Essex Honey as a finely realized return for Dev Hynes.
• The album arrives Aug. 29 on RCA Records following a six-year pause in Hynes’s Blood Orange output.
• Critics highlight lyrics shaped by the death of Hynes’s mother and reflections on Essex, Ilford and the wider London landscape.
• The production merges R&B, pop, electronica and orchestral textures with abrupt jump-cuts and recurring disruptive cello to create a unified mood.
• A broad cast contributes largely in the background — including Lorde, Caroline Polachek, Daniel Caesar, Mustafa, Brendan Yates and Zadie Smith — with subtle uncredited moments and intertextual lifts from the Replacements, Yo La Tengo and Ben Watt, plus a Durutti Column credit on lead single The Field.