With Assume Form, James Blake delivers his most honest musical statement to date

On Assume Form, James Blake gives listeners the most fully realised statement since bursting onto the scene. Making use of his sometimes hypnotic, sometimes abrasive and on this album, wholly recontextualised, habit of looping sounds, Blake builds on his foundation to create lush songs that play to his strengths (that lush falsetto) while also inviting artists like Moses Sumney and Metro Boomin to guest on individual songs.

While Blake burst onto the scene with a trio of EPs that stuttered like the best dubstep artists still do, he’s since become a producer to the likes of Beyoncé and even reclusive hip-hop star Frank Ocean (he appeared on the former’s album, Lemonade). Over the course of three subsequent albums, he’s also taken his sound into multiple directions, with the biggest surprise being 2016’s The Colour in Anything, which while cohesive, sometimes felt overlong and self-indulgent.

On this album, Blake proves that his working with other artists has paid dividends, with some of the best songs showcasing unexpected artists like Spanish songstress Rosalía and reclusive rapper André 3000. That both can coexist on a 48-minute long album and play to their respective strengths is a testament to Blake’s skill behind the mixing board and of course his roster of friends in the music industry.

‘I’ll Come To’, which appears midway through the album holds on to the skittering undercurrent that entranced listeners of his early EPs The Bells Sketch and CMYK. Layered on top of are soaring instrumentals and Blake’s vocals which offer a glimpse of the musician’s current frame of mind — exultant in love and eager to share it with the world.

The album opens with the words, “Now I’m confiding,” and the entire album does give the musician the opportunity to get closer to the listeners, who’s Instagram and other social media aren’t used for the kind of confessional peeks into his life that typifies the relationship between celebrities and their fans in this era.

The change in lyrical subject matter is especially stark since only last year Blake defended the song, ‘Don’t Miss It’ (which appears towards the end of the album), after fans and publications started describing him as a “sad boy.” In his defense, which the singer posted on Twitter, he said in part, “Please don’t allow people who fear their own feelings to ever subliminally shame you out of getting anything off your chest, or identifying with music that helps you. There is no great victory in machismo and bravado in the end. The road to mental health and happiness, which I feel so passionately about, is paved with honesty.”

By tackling and talking about feelings, Blake has opened himself up to the world and allowed listeners a glimpse into his headspace. He’s definitely happier, and in a stable relationship (with The Good Place actress Jameela Jamil), with music that envelops the listener in warmth, layers and transcendental beauty — much like a fulfilling romance.

With this new intimacy and his influence within the music community, Assume Form is an album unlike any that came before it. Blake is more confident, more open while still retaining the silences and feeling of space that typified his earlier release. But he’s also taking from his collaborators as ‘Barefoot in the Park’, his track with Rosalía, sounds like it could be found on her last album El Mal Querer but yet retains Blake’s ear for repetitive, effervescent beats. Similarly, the piano that underscores album opener ‘Assume Form’ sounds like it could be the basis of one of Blake’s acoustic covers, but here, its interspersed with spoken word samples and a blossoming beat that hints at what the album has in store.

Blake has always been something of a chameleon when it comes to his output, equally at ease behind the piano playing covers of artists like Feist and Joni Mitchell or then seeming to be at the vanguard of pop adjacent, jittering beats. On this album, he succeeds in melding those two aspects to create his most easy-to-listen album that can also serve as a welcome introduction to his ever-expanding oeuvre. With an album that’s sure to pop-up on year-end lists, it seems only right that his most honest musical statement is also the one that’s his best yet.