James Blake
James Blake: 7
James Blake's Klavierwerke EP, his third and last of 2010, hinted at a move away from the forward-thinking dubstep of The Bells Sketch and CMYK toward a more intimate, personal sound. With his eponymous debut album, James Blake completes that transition. The songs are stripped down to the barest essentials, and Blake's voice, rare on the EPs, comes to the fore on every song. In this sense, James Blake is much more of a pop album than anything he did before.
Some of Blake's best EP tracks (CMYK, for instance) are appealing for their shuffling, active beats. On James Blake, however, the beats tend to crawl. Look at Wilhelms Scream, where the beat moves forward only tentatively, each beat isolated from those before it. As the background drone rises in volume, the beat eventually drops out altogether, finally coming back in a slightly more propulsive form toward the end. It's a completely different effect from on his EPs, but it works brilliantly.
Vocally, Blake sounds similar at times to both Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) and Antony Hegarty (Antony & the Johnsons). The Vernon comparison comes out most strongly in his sparse but effective use of electronic modification on songs like I Never Learnt to Share. At times, however, the comparison is too apt. The two-part Lindesfarne comes across as simply a lesser version of Bon Iver's song Woods. The first part is mostly just Blake's electronically modified vocals, and while the second part puts more behind him, Lindesfarne as a whole is still the weakest part of the album. Regarding Hegarty, Blake doesn't have nearly his talent, but his tone is often similar, and satisfyingly so.
Both Vernon and Hegarty are noteworthy for their ability to wrench huge emotions out of their voices, and Blake's debut shares the same sort of intimate nature as their works ("my brother and my sister don't speak to me, but I don't blame them"). The sparseness of the background gives the album a spacious beauty that sits well with the lyrics. Blake previously mostly hinted at the mood of a song lyrically, often with haunting fragments of vocals (most likely influenced by Burial's use of vocals on Untrue), but here he's direct. In general, he pulls off this approach successfully, especially on songs like I Never Learnt to Share and To Care (Like You).
While the fact that James Blake doesn't sound much like any other Blake release (though it does share clear ties with Klavierwerke) makes it refreshing, its best moments come when Blake uses electronics reminiscent of his older works to augment the vocal focus. One of the most powerful moments on the album is the release at the end of I Never Learnt to Share, where the beat sounds like a close cousin of those on Klavierwerke. Likewise, the excellent cover of Feist's Limit to Your Love drops out midway through, returning with just the rhythm, where Blake excels.
Prior to its release, I had hyped up James Blake to absurd heights in my head, heights I couldn't reasonably expect it to meet. Even tempering those expectations, it's somewhat of a disappointment. It's not the breakthrough, landmark album his EPs suggested it would be. He's still growing and trying new things, and I'm sure that he'll realize his full potential sooner rather than later. With these caveats in mind, I can appreciate James Blake for what it is: a very good debut by one of the freshest active musicians.
