James Blake's discography has experienced a gradual thaw. While still mired in heartbreak and discontentment, the production on 2016's
The Colour in Anything brightened up just a touch from the stark atmospheres of
Blake's groundbreaking earlier records. His fourth album,
Assume Form, felt a few degrees warmer as well, with several songs that offset his signature melancholy with feelings of springy joy and the giddy excitement of new love. Fifth album
Friends That Break Your Heart continues the emotional climate change that the producer/songwriter has been experimenting with, landing largely as a friendly pop record, even while holding on to traces of the pain and loneliness that are inextricable from
Blake's music. A string of straightforward and uncomplex songs open the album. The spare "Famous Last Words" flows affably through subtle synth lines and increasingly layered vocals, opening up into a sweet swell of strings and romantic harmonies just before winding down. "Life Is Not the Same" brings back the skeletal piano chords, clicky drum programming, and unexpected production turns of
Blake's early work, but anchors the song's more free-floating qualities with a soaring chorus. It commits to dynamism in a way that's almost anthemic by
James Blake standards, wallowing in heartbreak but still delivering a hooky chorus. The melodic harpsichord samples and swimmy synth arpeggios of "Coming Back" are so complimentary of guest collaborator
SZA's vocals, it's almost too soon when her verse ends and
Blake's wispy falsetto returns. The album moves through a few different modes as it goes on, including the chipper post-breakup shrugging of "Foot Forward," the catchy and hypnotic sample-bending of "I'm So Blessed You're Mine," and "Frozen," a continuation of
Blake's collaboration with high-profile rappers that finds
SwaVay and
JID executing sharp verses over an eerie, creeping instrumental. Even though
Friends That Break Your Heart travels a winding path from experimental rap tracks to the tender balladry that makes up the majority of its final quarter, it's still one of the more accessible, and occasionally predictable, collections of material from
Blake. Sounding like it was created from the other side of the crushing sadness that defined his earliest work, the album continues
Blake's incremental shift to lighter material and songs that lean more into acceptance than torment. ~ Fred Thomas