JAMES BLAKE - Before

James Blake's relationship with the Ep format has always been a bit complicated, with up-and-down results. Just consider the mediocre “Enough Thunder”, sandwiched between towering achievements like the self-titled album and “Overgrown”, which remain the true jewels of his career. In short, Blake seems to use this format mainly to repurpose some leftover B-side pulled from a drawer or discarded without much conviction. In between, baffling choices like leaving masterpiece singles such as “If The Car Beside You Moves Ahead” out of everything. Choices that clash with the proverbial meticulousness of the English electro-writer, but there you go.

“Before” nonetheless gathers 4 songs that satisfy his never-extinguished dancefloor urges, picking up and paying tribute to his early days as a DJ, but above all — as he himself stated — “finally feeling confident enough to put vocals over dance rhythms”. And indeed the title track sounds like it could have come off a record by his friend Jamie XX: a sticky refrain, four-on-the-floor beat and a soul crescendo suggesting a feeling of post-pandemic rebirth, with the video shot during lockdown saying it all.

“Do You Ever” is sharper-edged and less immediate, somewhere between r'n'b and Dubstep. While the closing “Summer Of Now” brings the London songwriter back to familiar territory: introspection by the bucketload, organ pauses and a change of course with a filtered little voice à la Burial, alternating with soft, deep vocals. Along with the aforementioned title track, certainly the best moment of the bunch.

“Before” thus points to a James Blake who's still largely on form overall, even though it remains inexplicable, yet again, that singles released shortly before were left off: “You're Too Precious” and the moving “Are You Even Real”, the latter among the finest songs Blake has ever written.

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07/12/2020