James Blake: James Blake

James Blake
James Blake
Rating: Meh

Last year, 22 year old wunderkind James Blake released 3 stunning EPs (The Bells Sketch, CMYK, and Klavierwerke) that announced a major new talent in the electronic music world. Each EP was distinct, yet clearly from the same artist, moving effortlessly from dense, stuttering dubstep, to pitch-shifted vocal sampling a la Burial, and onto a more bluesy, vocal-based sound. All of these brief EPs whet my appetite for his debut full length album.

And now, James Blake has been released, and I am a bit of a loss as to how I feel about it. Based on his output from last year, I was expecting another giant leap forward with his sound, and yet, James Blake finds Blake in a bit of a holding pattern. Drawing more from the Klavierwerke EP as well as his late 2010 single "Limit To Your Love," which is included here, the album is comprised of 11 tracks focusing heavily on muted beats, piano, and Blake's gorgeous voice. Until "Limit For Your Love," Blake hadn't sung on any tracks, and finding he has such a supple, honeyed voice was a true revelation.



"Limit To Your Love," is by far the standout track here. A gorgeous cover of the Feist song, it shows a wonderful use of minimal sounds and space to create an aching and longing. Listening to the song, you almost sit on the edge of your seat, intoxicated by the warm production.

Instead of building from that template, James Blake gets stuck in a rut early and rarely ventures out of that limited palate. Most songs feature Blake's voice front and center, with few beats and mostly minimal organ or synth drones and piano as accompaniment. After the 4th or 5th track, the songs begin to blur and are hard to distinguish from each other.

The album starts promisingly with the quiet piano and stuttering, glitchy beats of "Unluck," with Blake's fragile voice auto-tuned and pitch shifted almost beyond recognition.



But the album then gets almost immediately bogged down with a string of tracks that border on somnolence, coming to a crashing halt with the auto-tuned duo of "Lindesfarne I" and "Lindesfarne II." When "Limit To Your Love" finally erupts afterwards, it is like a shot to the face how stunning the track is. Its beauty made me go back over and over to the first half of the record to make sure I was having the right reaction. Unfortunately, "Limit To Your Love," just made the previous tracks seem more wanting.

Unfortunately, the following tracks don't do anything to up the ante. "Give Me My Month," an almost acapella song, at 1:54 is the shortest track, and yet feels the longest. "To Care (Like You)" almost expands the template, with pingy percussion, and a sampled female vocal interwoven with Blake's voice, but feels almost like a sketch that hasn't been fleshed out enough. "Why Don't You Call Me," is another piano-based vocal piece, that, aside from some cut and paste glitches, really meanders pointlessly.

"I Mind" is truly the only song that gave me hope on the album. Feeling like a logical progression from the EPs, it draws from the dense dubstep of The Bells Sketch sessions and marries it perfectly with the piano based vocals of Klaiverwerke, erupting at the end with a gloriously loopy voice sample, twisted and turned into its own instrument. Risks like this would have been far more welcome than the rest of the turgid offerings.

I am harder on this album than most debut albums based on the brilliance of the EPs Blake released last year. They were truly stunning in their scope, range and execution. Based on those records and Blake's obvious talent, I am not willing to write him off just yet. Blake obviously does not like to repeat himself and is always changing his sound, challenging himself to do new things. I just don't think the songs on James Blake were the right direction for him to go.

Rating Guide

Chilfos: masterpiece; coolest thing I've heard in ages.

Woof Daddy: excellent; just a hair away from being a masterpiece.

Grrrr: very good; will definitely be considered for my top albums of the year.

Yeah Daddy Make Me Want It: good; definitely invites further listens and peaks one's interest for more material.

Meh: not horrible, but certainly not great; could have either been trimmed or polished.

Jeez Lady: what the hell happened? Just plain bad. They should hang their heads in shame and be forced to listen to Lady Gaga ad nauseam as penance.

Tragicistani: so bad, armed villagers with pitchforks and torches should run the artist out of the country for inflicting this abomination on the human race.