“now I’m confiding,”
January 25, 2019 7:10 PM   Subscribe

James Blake' Assume Form: a big, glitchy, swooning, hyper-modern declaration of love [The Guardian] “It’s not hard to see why someone might fall in love with Jameela Jamil – the star around which James Blake’s fourth album, Assume Form, orbits. [...] If one were to pitch Blake’s latest album in a Hollywood elevator, it would be that Assume Form is a soundtrack to that slow reveal: a loved-up paean to finding oneself in another. In that respect, it’s like Father John Misty’s I Love You, Honeybear, stripped of its cynicism and soft porn. (“I’ll use both hands,” is about as far as Blake goes here.) It’s Nick Cave’s The Boatman’s Call – the Bad Seeds’ thinly disguised suite of love songs to PJ Harvey – with way more guest rappers.” [YouTube]["Where's The Catch"]["Mile High"]["Tell Them"]["Don't Miss It"]

• James Blake’s ‘Assume Form’ Is The Coexistence Of Personal And Professional Betterment [Uproxx]
“Blake’s fourth career album turns firmly away from the idea of sadness, without majorly altering the aesthetic that fans have come to expect. Blake’s Assume Form is still emotionally forthcoming, but those emotions are full of love and hope, thanks to his current romance with The Good Place‘s Jameela Jamil. And this isn’t just some super-couple gossip. Blake literally took to Twitter to say “you are the reason this album exists” to her, and she responded with a virtual bow. Anyone that follows Jamil on social media knows that the British actress is outspoken about body shaming and the media’s portrayal of women, to which Blake’s comments about mental health seem to find unity within progressive couple goals.”
• There’s a suffocating seriousness [Pitchfork]
“Blake’s last album was billed as a kind of coming up for air. After the darkness of his self-titled debut and 2013’s Overgrown, new love had let the light in and buoyed his spirits. That now looks like a merely transitory stage on the path to the grand transformation he has undergone on Assume Form. He is a new man here, changed by love—something we learn again and again, as he examines every centimeter of his ego, every corner of the vertiginous ecstasy and insecurity of true love at last. On that opening title track, he confides, “I will be touchable/I will be reachable,” sounding like he is repeating instructions a couples counselor once gave him. Even goopier is the line “I thought sex was at my pace, but I was wrong.” There’s something weirdly clinical about his treatment of romance; instead of rose petals, there’s the pulpy taste of a wooden tongue depressor.”
• ‘Assume Form’ Is Not the James Blake Album We Deserve [Highsnobsociety]
“From the startlingly forthright nature of Assume Form‘s lyrical content down to the newfound clarity with which he has mixed his vocals to opening himself up in a big way to the collaboration of other producers, Blake has – true to his word – never allowed himself to feel as present as he does here. But further listening of the record points to the fact that he has clearly lost something along the way on this journey to join the world. Blake is objectively among the most influential artists of the past decade, blending and contorting hip-hop beats, R&B crooning, and classical instrumentation into pop song structures well before it became the industry standard for artists of each respective genre to do so. His relationship with the world of hip-hop in particular seemed destined for further greatness. Initial collaborations with RZA and Chance the Rapper gave way to full-on production for the likes of Vince Staples and Beyoncé and features on Kendrick Lamar tracks in the span of a few years.”
• James Blake’s Assume Form is a pivot to romance [Fader]
“Blake's credited partner and The Good Place actress Jameela Jamil with helping him open up; “It feels good now to just be able to tell people how I feel,” he told Dazed in a recent interview. “In my everyday life, I wasn't being encouraged to sit behind metaphor or sit behind long silences or be in a mood without explaining what it’s about.” If Blake is adding new colors to his lyrical pallette, Assume Form is still occasionally guilty of floating at the same glacial speed that defined his older material. While beautifully textured, the album can sound cold to the touch; on “Don’t Miss It.”, Blake examines his past romantic failures from the vantage point of getting to “hang out with your favourite person every day,” an exuberance tempered by Blake’s predilection for icy atmospheres and isolated choir-boy vocals, while “Don’t Miss It” and “Are You In Love” fall back on Overgrown’s lonely synth sounds.”
posted by Fizz (4 comments total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
 
It’s good. Can’t Believe the Way We Flow is a total jam imo. I don’t think I get the James Blake hype though.
posted by sleeping bear at 9:15 PM on January 25, 2019


"The less said about its blasé lyrics the better."

Is there a word for when you can tell someone didn't use a word correctly and are not quite sure what word they might have meant? Or for the quantum of merit one accrues for misusing a word but remembering the diacritics? Because I went back to that track, the one with the "series of repetitive yelps backed by cinematic strings," thinking "blasé," and "repetitive yelp" were an odd pairing, and couldn't really figure out what the reviewer might have meant to say. "Bland?" "Dull?" "Boring?" "Trite?" I have so many guesses, and I can't believe I'm spending them trying to decrypt something from somewhere called "High Snobiety."

I'm also not sure any of these reviews are criticizing him for things he wasn't guilty of elsewhere. Pitchfork just seems to have decided that if he's happy and singing about it, that's worse than when he was miserable and singing about it. But I've always thought he was perhaps a bit overwrought, and wrote off any resistance I happened to have to that to failing to remember that most popular music is a little overwrought, but that he was wrapping the sentiment in sounds I wasn't used to in that particular combination.

Anyhow, thank you for posting this because I don't follow him closely enough to have known this was out, but I streamed it right away and enjoyed it and have returned to perhaps block and tackle against the album's detractors because I personally liked it as much as I have his other work. More broadly, he's the product of something I've liked about music in my middle years, which is all the stuff surrounding it on the assorted services, helping me find more things I like. I'm pretty sure "Life Round Here" was on the playlist for my company's annual user event almost six years ago. I liked it when I heard it echoing around an empty conference hall before the attendees started filing in, and I used some sort of Genius List or "more like this" feature on whatever streaming service I was using after I used Soundhound to figure out what it even was, and that led to this rolling playlist I've had around for years that I've added to and taken away from in a way that the teenage me who traded around 90 minute cassette tapes could never have imagined. I don't even know if "Life Round Here" is still on that list, the same way that PC under my desk is both 20 years old but shares no components with whatever was under my desk 20 years ago.

So, anyhow anyhow, leave James Blake alone I guess is what I'm saying, because he's at ground zero of my personal "oh, music works better now" epiphany.
posted by mph at 10:02 PM on January 25, 2019 [7 favorites]


Metafilter: the quantum of merit one accrues for misusing a word but remembering the diacritics
posted by nightrecordings at 10:27 PM on January 25, 2019 [9 favorites]


Is there a word for when you can tell someone didn't use a word correctly and are not quite sure what word they might have meant?

I've heard people say "blasé" when they seem to mean "blah" a few times lately.
posted by atoxyl at 4:54 PM on January 26, 2019 [1 favorite]


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