Album review: James Blake, Overgrown

As impressive as James Blake’s self-titled debut album was, the 24-year-old Londoner has taken a massive leap forward with his follow-up.

It inhabits the same aurally cavernous space but Overgrown builds on its predecessor in its lyrical and emotional directness – it’s better because Blake learned how to write songs and fell in love. He’s clearly grown in confidence, behind both the studio desk and the microphone, too.

On exquisite lead single Retrograde, Blake’s falsetto stands proudly out front with just a snare and a piano for company. A buzzing siren, rather than distorting and perhaps distracting as it might have on Blake’s debut, gravitates around the intensity of the vocal: “Suddenly I’m hit / Is this the darkness of the dawn? … Ignore everybody else / We’re alone now”. Here and on every other track, each musical element is precisely where it should be to elicit the maximum emotional response from the listener.

While Blake has become a more rounded singer-songwriter his continued love of forward-thinking dance music – despite his success Blake still runs a club night at renowned venue Plastic People – is still evident. ‘Digital Lion’, the collaboration with ambient innovator Brian Eno, is a tribal banger that Leftfield will wish they made. Voyeur is pure peak-time techno (complete with synth cowbell) that somehow manages to be as moving as any of the album’s ballads, particularly when Blake sings: “Cause I am flawed / At times unsure / I should do whatever will make you feel secure”.

Just as he set out to do, Blake has scored a direct hit to the heart, in the most sonically arresting way. Overgrown is outstanding.