Album Review: James Blake - James Blake

James Blake - James Blake

James Blake, the runner-up on the BBC's Sound of 2011 poll, releases his self-titled debut album this week. I've been idly interested in this album, actually, ever since hearing the strange but interesting Limit To Your Love on the radio a while back. I enjoyed the sparse, bare nature of that song and I thought Blake had an interesting voice and a sound which I hadn't heard before.

Whilst all of those things may be true, this record is drastically bad.

The reviews I have read of James Blake champion the singer's unusual style and make reference to the fact that an artist with such an noncommercial sound can feature so highly in a BBC poll of that nature. What the reviews seem to fail to take into account, though, is that some of this album is awful.

Large chunks of it sound like a young child experimenting with a kids keyboard whilst Blake warbles - at a different rhythm and in a different key - over this weirdly constructed backbeat. On some songs he seems to be trying to auto-tune the auto-tune machine over no instrumentation at all.

When there's some basic piano and some normal vocals - Limit To Your Love is a rare example - Blake sounds like he could be a genuine soul star. However, most of the record simply lacks charm, talent and, if I am being ruthlessly honest, anything approaching a tune. I actually ended up having to turn it off on the second spin as it was grating so badly I couldn't listen to it any more.

I am sure that there are some people out there who will hail it as absolute genius. And, I wanted to like it; I really did. Whilst I have an open mind with music and am prepared to give anything a whirl, this album is one of the most disappointing and uncompromisingly bad records I've heard in a long, long time. Terrible.