Ah, springtime! That most glorious time of the year! Yes, it is finally here, bringing with it that most beautiful unpredictability of weather patterns. One day, it is sunny and the birds chirp loudly. The next, raindrops fall angrily from the sky and soak the shoes of those who wade through opaque, dirt-filled puddles. Yet these continual shifts in weather do not necessarily provoke anger. They are, instead, a welcome break from the oppressive winter months. In spring, trees are still barren of leaves and rain showers are plenty. Yet spring has an undeniable, delicate beauty: the delicacy of a small, budding plant, of the first overweight squirrel emerging dazedly from a hole in the ground and of the first signs of open water on Lake Mendota.
Feigned literary pretension aside, James Blake’s new album Overgrown is the perfect spring album. Blake’s lyrics-supported by his lithe vocals-evoke beautifully sparse imagery. They carry a certain delicacy, much like those budding springtime flowers. On the title track, Blake sings in a silky falsetto, “I don’t wanna be a star / But a stone on the shore / Long doorframe in a wall / When everything’s overgrown.” These abstractions receive sonic support from a subtle, hip hop bassline, menacing piano chords and some of the most beautiful horns you will hear in popular music this year. Like many of the songs on Overgrown, it’s beautiful how the song unfurls.
Sly, creeping synths turn into an all-out Flying Lotus-esque jam on “Life Round Here,” in which Blake flirtatiously croons, “Everything feels like touchdown on a rainy day.” On “I Am Sold,” Blake sings, “As we lay, nocturnal / Speculate how we feel,” as distant percussion and desperate synths pour underneath. On Overgrown, Blake spends much of his time pondering the things around him with imagery like this. He sings and writes in a style that suggests a man lying around, staring at those obese squirrels as they lumber through his backyard on a cloudy spring day. Yet Blake’s production choices-which often begin gently and unfold into breathtakingly dense compositions-add a sense of a dire need to escape this ponderous state.
This direness takes the form of tornado siren-like synths that erupt in “Retrograde” atop the lyrics, “And your friends are gone / And your friends won’t come.” Blake’s falsetto shoots about this instrumentation gracefully, but the sound has a dire urgency. These synths appear again on “Voyeur” and sound like an air raid. Blake begins the song with a beautiful vocal melody, singing, “I should do whatever will make you feel secure.” As the song progresses, a repeated vocal sample, incessant cowbell and creepy-crawly piano arpeggios intertwine with these synth sirens. Then it explodes into an all-out, perfectly dance-worthy jam. James has escaped his subdued, lyrical introspection through his production.
Blake’s production gives a perfect creepy backbone to RZA’s breathtaking vocal feature on “Take a Fall for Me.” The noir-ish, lo-fi piano and drums are reminiscent of early Atmosphere and Wu-Tang production. The overt rap presence of RZA’s effortless vocals help to indicate the uncanny malleability of Blake’s production. “Digital Lion,” produced by Brian Eno, unfurls from an airy intro and vocals that state, “the rainiest days,” into a simultaneously discomforting and soothing dubstep beat. This provokes the on-edge feeling that James Blake has continually proven himself capable of evoking for his listeners.
The final two songs on the album are both heartbreakingly fragile, offering lyrics such as “We’re going to the last, you and I” and “Our love comes back in the middle of the night.” Throughout its 39 minutes, Overgrown is emotionally overwhelming in its lyrical and sonic delicacy. It brings to mind the subtlety of Radiohead’s The King of Limbs and Yo La Tengo’s recent Fade. It is a beautiful album. But listen to it now, during the springtime, when the first hints of summer’s beauty are at their most fragile. It will be an amazing experience.
4.5 out of 5 stars
