Completing The List: James Blake

Completing The List: James Blake

This is the second album from this list that I'll be writing about, and as I'm going through this list I'm realising it's going to take me a fair bit of time to write each one if I do a very long review, so the length of the review may change per album.

James Blake stated in an interview leading up to the release of the album that the xx's debut meant that listeners would be less shocked by what they heard on his album, but if you go into this album with the xx being the muggiest, most electronic and experimental album that you've heard then James Blake's debut is still going to leave you in shock, but also in awe at the raw beauty. On a first listen, I'd say it's easier to make comparisons to a mix of early-Portishead and late-Radiohead with the vocals being an accompaniment of the music rather than the other way round as it is in the xx debut. 

The album starts off with an unusual beat and glitchiness in 'Unluck' that seem slightly soft and comforting at first before revealing themselves to be somewhat tragic and creating the sense that the listener is trapped inside the loop of the song. It may be a slightly disorienting and unconventional opening, especially for a debut, but it works; the cut is a fantastic opener that sets the tone of the album and breaks the listener's expectations of what the album will be. The follow-up is interesting simply in that it is much of the same structurally, a looping set of lyrics over hypnotic, glitchy and beautiful instrumental, but this is slightly less successful simply because it's so similar to the previous track and the fact that the muggy production cuts through the vocals making them a less effective contrast than they are in 'Unlucky'.

The album's first clean vocal, without much background distortion comes from 'I Never Learnt To Share' which feels like Blake might open up a bit "My brother and my sister don't speak to me, but I don't blame them", before reverting back to the heavily distorted instrumentals with looping lyrics over the top, it's not innefective but by this point I'm craving something a little different from the tracklist, and so comes 'Lindisfarne I'. Immediately this feels like an offcut from a modern Bon Iver album, before you realise that this came long before Justin Vernon was using the light-autotune-on-soft-vocals technique, so I can't help feel that this is partly where Vernon got the idea, or at least inspiration. The two-parter that is created by the followup 'Lindisfarne II' continues to differ from the beginning of the album by remaining minimalist, soft and actually having some different lyrics throughout the song with the addition of a fairly clean acoustic guitar. 

What begins as a Lounge-Jazz sounding 'Limit To Your Love' quickly descends into a dark post-dubstep-esque lyrical loop that is once again incredibly mesmerizing and sensitive but the darker feel of the electronics eliminates some of the emotion from the music. This feels like a bit of a turning point in the tracklist, with 'To Care Like You' continuing the darker theme musically. although changing it up with more than just two or three lyrics stuck on repeat. This second half of the album isn't bad, it provides a bit more range to the album, but in some ways it actually feels slightly incomplete, a bit like Blake has realised he needs to switch things up a bit but not quite figured out how to do this so ends up taking a few ideas, mashing them together and calling it quits. 

That's not to say that the second half is bad, or that the first half is perfect, just that the latter half feels a bit tired, 'I Mind' and 'Measurements' close the album off in a more simple and subtle way that are a nice way to finish, but much more simple and far less interesting than how the album opens. 

At the end of the day, this album would take a lot of listens to really dissect and understand it, I completely understand that I'm probably taking this on a very surface-level listen, but it's a tiring album to listen to more than once. Yes, it's beautiful, but the looping vocals, incessant dubstep beats and emotional but confusing content matter make it not exactly an easy listen if you want to take any more than the ethereal sounds away from it. Having said that, it's still an incredibly impressive piece of art that is almost hard to believe it's a debut.

7/10

Favourite songs: Unluck, Lindisfarne I, To Care (Like You)

Least favourite songs: Limit To Your Love, Why Don't you call me

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