James Blake
Overgrown

I fully intend to praise this LP and I'm ready for the backlash. Intrigued by the super negative review given by Rolling Stone Italy (one star out of five), I wanted to listen to this album myself, just to see if I should join the chorus of "Death to it!!", or not.
Instead, I found myself entangled in the emotional net that James Blake constructs; ensnared with no possibility of turning back and never regretting having taken a step into the unknown.
Unknown because I admit I had missed his 2011 debut album, lauded by critics as a masterpiece so much that they had to invent a new name to define the music of this young artist: post-dubstep.

If you let yourself be drawn into this intense, muscular, meticulously detailed LP, cerebral yet liberating at the same time, you won’t regret it.
Right from the first track, the title track "Overgrown", James Blake's ambivalent voice conveys intensity and intention; desolation of the soul synthesized in melancholic bass. A classically soul voice usage that blends with perfect electronic sounds, full and rich despite being sparse compared to the genre they are associated with (dubstep, indeed).
"Life Around Here", for example, has a trip-hop base over which Blake's velvet voice caresses your soul with purely soul-gospel phrasing and vocal constructions.
It shifts from intricate psychological realities dictated by beats, white noises, and looped recordings of harrowing vocal patterns, to simple tracks where the piano even overshadows the voice; such as in "Dlm" which quickly flows with bitterness and solid sadness.
Or "To the Last", which is emotionally perfect: Blake's vocality dangerously approaches that intensity typical of an Antony Hegarty interpretation or a highly inspired Bon Iver. Slowly, it slides towards the sweet and calm conclusion of this album, which in the Deluxe version ends with "Every Day I Ran"; here there is more chaos, the discomfort of someone outside reality is tangible. It seems like an exorcism, it might suggest disorder but in the almost total lack of sensible and complete lyrics and the systematicity of the beats, order is very much present.

Bold experimentation also in the collaborations present in this full-length: "Take A Fall For Me", is a half-demon to fight. The first of the two collaborations present in the LP, it’s perhaps the least placeable track because it slightly breaks the general flow of the album. The featuring of RZA (de facto leader of Wu-Tang Clan), is a subdued and dark rap, not as classy as the rest of Blake’s work sounds.
While the other collaboration on the LP is with Brian Eno, which I preferred: "Digital Lion" is a claustrophobic tribal dance composed of four cathartic minutes, methodically perfect, built between synths, alternate vocals, and post-dubstep stripped to the bone.

After listening to it a couple of times, I clearly understood why those who love pure and raw rock—and especially those who remain stuck in Mesozoic-era preconceptions (did I really write that?!)—cannot appreciate an album of this caliber: too introspective, too slow, too meticulously detailed for those who appreciate the more immediate and instinctive sounds of rock 'n' roll. Which is the same world I "come from", but so be it.
I am convinced, however, that choosing alternative paths is anything but a logical or methodically planned move and that's why, despite all the research, the pre-recording preparation accomplished for this little miracle of electronic with a soul, I can see the immediacy and genuineness of this guy who manages to express himself by blending genres that seem opposite on the surface, in a new way of communicating and making music.