Rating: 3/5
James Blake is an electronic producer and singer-songwriter from London. In 2011, he released his debut album. It was called James Blake. A number of critics and music listeners collectively lost their shit over it. I did not.Not that I didn’t find James’ mix of post-dubstep and soul an attractive, atmospheric style of music; James Blake had enough languorous, reverbed beats and lonely piano lines to pleasantly soundtrack a spell of late-night studying. It’s really just his voice that didn’t cut the mustard for me. That warbly, self-pitying, scarcely melodic voice. Instead of actually trying to sound any good, its emphasis seemed to be entirely on arousing human emotion – making you feel something, man – and it never succeeded in stirring anything within me. I’m not a cold person by any means, and will in fact still cry if shown Return of the King, Gladiator or the first five minutes of Up, but I’d honestly get about as much of a sense of melancholy and wintry beauty by staring thoughtfully into a glass of milk as I’d get from James Blake’s downcast croon. “I don’t know about my loving anymore, all that I know is I’m falling, falling, falling …” Yeah, whatever.
After it received comparable or even greater critical acclaim than his debut, I thought I should probably check out James’ sophomore Overgrown. Though a deviation from his monotonous, seemingly one-trick sound would have been nice, Overgrown is for all intents and purposes the exact same kind of music he made two years ago. It’s still that bleak, introverted (dare I say narcissistic?) style of R&B, the sort of thing that goes hand in hand with the image of James wandering alone around a frosty garden, or staring pensively at himself in the bathroom mirror as a single tear falls into the sink in slow motion. Cheer up, brah.
However, the beats are more detailed, the hooks are far stronger (see “Retrograde”) and, praise Buddha, his voice is actually beginning to have an effect on me. These pluckings of the heartstrings are still minor ones, and I will continue to go instead to Thom Yorke, Jeff Mangum, and Jónsi for my daily feels, but his vocals are finally becoming more to me than just a sorrowful warble. If he maintains this upwards trajectory, I may even really like his third album.
Though Overgrown is a perfectly pleasant, moody record that has improved my opinion of James Blake, I don’t know if I’d quite call myself a fan of his just yet. But I’m getting there.
