James Blake
Overgrown
Island Republic
You will read a gushing review of this album, the new one by James Blake on any other corner of the internet. But I can’t do that. I can’t lie. You see I tried – once again. I tried with this album – just like I tried with the debut. And all I hear is a very boring – sometimes trite, painful – voice bleating on about very boring things; phoned-in loneliness, with the fax machine providing the musical accompaniment.
Blake’s manufactured sparseness has been raved about by so many – he takes elements of Eno and Prince apparently, he’s like D’Angelo I’ve also been told; he’s a genius.
I hear Antony & The Johnsons without the drama, without the songs.
I would rather hear John Martyn – any day. Still. Always.
The clipped, jittery beats have all but been dropped this time, lurching piano – sometimes treated (Brian Eno pops in to pick up his name; RZA does the same) and a hollow, spiralling voice. That’s about the thick of it this time around. These ballads say nothing, do nothing, go nowhere. I mean, sure, they rise and fall, Blake sends them off – little messages in bottles – but it’s all just empty-gesture music once again.
There’s no heart, warmth, depth, soul. But this will already be talked up around the world as an album of huge heart, total warmth, surprising depth and deep soul. So round and round we go then.
I could just tell you this album is not for me – and it’s not. That’s obvious.
But I’d prefer to tell you that this album is not for you. I’d prefer you to hear something where the main production trick doesn’t seem like a window was left open to catch a hint of the fall of rain, a voice draining life from the listener.
This album will be raved about because it’s easy to tell you that Blake is young and brilliant and he’s making a kind of music you never thought you’d actually like.
Everyone wants to think they’re liking something new and hip – even if they don’t care themselves about being new and hip. Everyone wants that.
But the truth is this album sounds like David Gray’s White Ladder album after a stroke.
I completely understand not liking an album, but there is no reason to fall into insulting the music or its listeners; the fact that you resort to the cheap trick of ‘untimely generalization’ (If you like the album, you must – on one level or another – just want to be seen liking something new and hip) speaks volumes about how much substance there is to the review as a whole.
I love the sound of his music – I love his meticulous runs, jumps between registers, and the range of his voice; I love the Eno-assisted spatial organization of the instrumentals, I think the melodies to most of the tracks are catchy (I couldn’t stop humming ‘Life Round Here’ for days after first hearing it). You can easily disagree, not find the music enjoyable, consider his voice unpleasant, and find the tunes themselves empty, but in that case, at least establish those parameters in your review.
You don’t enjoy the music because it is not to your taste, fine, but do not take it upon yourself to indirectly label the music bad and boring and its listeners as mere hip-seeking sheeple. At least not without including any critique deeper than your personal disappointment.