Blood Orange – “Saint” Video
On Friday, Dev Hynes released his latest Blood Orange album, the lovely and poignant Negro Swan. It’s an absolutely beautiful album on the surface level, but it’s got a lot else going on, too. Hynes has described it as being an album about the depression and anxiety of being a person of color, or a queer person, living in today’s United States. The more you listen to it, the more the ideas come out. And today, after releasing early videos for “Charcoal Baby” and “Jewelry,” Hynes has made a new one for the bubbling synth-soul jam “Saint.”
Hynes directed the new video himself, and it’s got the same naturalistic lighting and beatific feeling of a lot of Jonathan Demme’s ’80s movies. Not a lot happens in the video; it’s just Hynes playing the song in a room while a group of extremely beautiful people looks on. But the camera lingers lovingly on everyone present, and there’s something strangely moving about it. Watch it below:
Here’s another thing worth noting: Hynes tells Exclaim! that he made a whole other album during the Negro Swan sessions. This isn’t anything new; Hynes has made and then shelved two other complete albums in the last two years. But Hynes hasn’t said that he won’t be releasing the second new album, which he calls “more nihilistic and aggressive,” as opposed to the “sunny, more sculpted” Negro Swan. Here’s hoping the second album comes out, as well.
Negro Swan is out now on Domino.