“E.V.P.” starts with a fat synth belch, like rubber boots squawking on wet linoleum. A studio rat as well as a solo act, Dev Hynes is especially good with evocative noises, and that synth seems to arrive straight from New York’s Danceteria circa-1982, still draped in scarves and trailing glitter. The song it announces is the centerpiece of his luminous and compassionate album Freetown Sound, and it pulls all of that album’s various threads—yearning for freedom, awareness of injustice, unbridled joy at the presence of the body, fear for its vulnerability—into one dense, breathing heat of tangled limbs and yearning.

On an album containing a metropolis of characters, cameos, and sonic details, “E.V.P.” is the most populous: Every sound, from the neener-neener synth whines and stiff funk guitars evoking “Slippery People” to the scratchy Arthur Russell strings, impart some indescribable flavor to the broth. It all resolves into a melody so generous it nearly overflows the borders of the song. No one wrote a chorus of this scale all year, or even seemed to try. In “E.V.P.” Hynes is alone, soaring unaccompanied in the sky. –Jayson Greene

Listen: Blood Orange: “E.V.P.”