James Blake: James Blake – review

(Atlas/A&M)It's always a victory when a record is too slippery to fit into a pigeonhole. So it is with 23-year-old James Blake's debut album: 11 heroically understated pieces that skirt the fringes of soul. The product of a creative family and a popular music course at London's Goldsmiths College, Blake is a mournful singer whose phrasing and delivery betray a youth spent listening to soul and R&B (and, in more recent times, Bon Iver and Antony Hegarty). Certainly, this album's inner heft is the...

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