James Blake
Assume Form
Polydor
He may be a Grammy nominee and Mercury Prize winner but there has never been anything conventional about the singer, songwriter, musician and record producer from London.
On this his fourth album the 30-year-old collaborates with a host of artists including rappers Travis Scott and André 3000 from Outkast and yet remains a warped Sam Smith captain of the ship in a sea of gently twisted electronic, gospel and R&B.
Here, Blake has eased the experimental for a more inviting, open-hearted listen, letting the world into the complexity of his mind to realise that in the end it is a rather glorious place to be.
Perhaps the cover gives it away. Whereas his self-titled debut features an artfully blurred portrait, in 2019 there are no masks as he appears up front with hands on his head.
These pared down, often haunting productions where less is more, comes with a sometimes glitchy off key digitally dextrous underbelly but with a more consistent ear for a piercing melody than previously.
This is encapsulated in the album's spinetingling art from adversity centrepiece Don't Miss It, which you could as the 11th of the 12 songs on offer.
It lays bare Blake's struggles with depression and anxiety and features a sparse understated piano that eventually twists and distorts before Blake just takes off with a tender brutality underpinned by captivating choral coos and a dense atmosphere.
"Everything is about me," Blake emotes, articulating fixated mental turmoil. "I am the most important thing."
He said of the track: "Coming at the end of the album was a choice. I think it kind of sums up the mission statement in some ways: Yes, there are millions of things that I could fixate on, and I have lost years and years and years to anxiety.
"There are big chunks of my life I can’t remember — moments I didn’t enjoy when I should have. Loves I wasn’t a part of. Heroes I met that I can’t really remember the feeling of meeting. Because I was so wrapped up in myself. And I think that’s what this is — the inner monologue of an egomaniac."
Recording the blissfully soulful Tell Them with poetic LA singer-songwriter Moses Sumney was also what Blake describes as a “vulnerable moment". It features a monologue on a one-night stand serving as confessional self-analysis.
While there are insecurities, there is nothing but a self-confident swagger about the pure love song Can't Believe The Way We Flow.
His tonal experimentations can fall flat though and there is a sole misstep. Mile High, the collaboration with featuring American record producer Metro Boomin and American rapper Travis Scott overdoses on vocal treatments to the point you really want to scream: "Stop, now!"
In the end it is clear that Blake, amidst all the modernity and past bizarre experiments, is quite simply a white soul boy who has mastered how to make himself and everything around him sound like nothing else.
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