Lightspeed Champion
Life is Sweet! Nice to Meet You
This is a peculiar record. LIS!NTMY is more Starlight Express than Test Icicle, a vaudevillian record kept commercial and chic. It’s packed with the choruses and crescendos we’ve come to expect from Rufus Wainwright or Queen’s operatic territory, the choir booming "Oh just stop complaining!" being a particular highlight.
Sadly the set-piece swoons and grand theatrics are offset by the ukulele-twee we’ve come to expect from London’s nu-folk scene which Mr. Champion hasn’t quite escaped as yet.
It’s too careful, too restricted in its absurdity. We are only allowed the most petite glimpse of the musical saw on ‘There’s Nothing Underwater’ and while ‘Middle of the Dark’ nearly captures a Motownian grandeur, Haynes is careful to use a Patrick Wolf-inspired vocal to keep it contemporary. We should be grateful for Haynes’ prolific output and for this eloquently surreal record. I just wish it was a little bolder, a little more willing to stray from its pop boundaries.
Arts / Plays and playing truant: Stephen Fry’s Cambridge
25 April 2025News / Candidates clash over Chancellorship
25 April 2025Music / The pipes are calling: the life of a Cambridge Organ Scholar
25 April 2025Comment / Cambridge builds up the housing crisis
25 April 2025News / Cambridge Union to host Charlie Kirk and Katie Price
28 April 2025