talent is so wide-ranging that every record, and every live show, can transport you to a different otherworldly setting with each song.
Mostly, that’s a good thing. I say ‘mostly’ because tonight’s near-apocalyptic ten-minute rave towards the end, which I won’t mention again in this review, tested my nerves to the point of almost reaching for my anxiety tablets. I didn’t have the right kind of sweets for that music. It wasn’t to my taste, but the crowd did go wild.
Thankfully, for my sake at least, Blake’s lengthy set in Glasgow covered what I love most about him. At times he sounded like with a rampant pulse, covering electronic solo work; at others, he was an outstanding, original singer-songwriter in his own right, with little sound of influence. And there’s nothing wrong with a good guitar number when it’s played as brilliantly as Blake plays his.
There were quite a few in this show. ‘I Had A Dream She Took My Hand’ is the most ANOHNI-adjacent song I’ve ever heard. ‘Retrograde’ live is a ruthless assault on the very being of one’s own soul, with uplifting but sad, soul-tearing consequences. Everyone in the house and I held our breath as he melodically, morosely, played every song like his life depended on it. He was joined by a backing group who held every beat perfectly. They brought a sometimes-needed boost to tunes like ‘Make Something Up’ and the dreamy, gloomy bop of ‘Say What You Will’.
In ‘Death Of Love’, Blake sampled the late, great Leonard Cohen’s ‘You Want It Darker’ in a profound piano-driven ballad of heartache and spirituality that one rarely finds at ‘normal’ gigs. Later came another almost sent down from above, the cathedral-sized electro choir version of The Verve’s ‘The Drugs Don’t Work’. It was almost unrecognisable from the original unless you knew the lyrics.
Blake knows where to take his cues from, and it shows in everything he sang to a crowd that stayed in utter silence throughout. Feist’s ‘Limit to Your Love’ is another cover that Blake made his own, as if no one else could have fathomed it.
That’s a big part of what makes his music so ethereal. SWG3 is an over-rated warehouse with renovational lipstick, but James Blake’s sound team knew how to make the most of it. Songs like ‘Thrown Around’ are, and were, ‘piano-driven pure pop classics’, and showed that Blake is capable of bringing lightness amongst the dark, in both the so-so venue and the tune.
“Last time I was here, someone shouted ‘here come the horses’,” he said midway through, asking if it was a ‘Scottish thing’. It wasn’t. It was just a random gig-goer being totally, well, . Blake responded warmly to our own cries of clarification, explaining why he loves this city so much, and he put his heart and soul into a performance that had us hanging on every note and the beauty of his voice.
My favourites from this show were too many to mention. But for Blake to sign off with ‘Vincent’, which he called “the saddest song ever written”, took my breath away, clutching my heartstrings and never letting go. I’d never heard it, and learned later that it was Don McLean’s ode to Van Gogh. Do hear both versions!
The many covers, influences, and Blake’s original takes on even his own recorded music are profound in a live setting. True artists are hard to come by, and James Blake is no longer one to watch out for. He’s one to grab with both hands.