By Kevin Donnellan
Tuesday nights in Whelans are not meant to be like this. People outside are desperately asking for spare tickets. Like fans on All-Ireland Final day but with nicer jeans. The excitement the Londoner has generated in his short career is impressive. His self-titled debut album has just been out over a month but a bigger venue would have probably easily have sold out on the back of the hype it has generated.
Of course hype is a dangerous word, hype can bring an Emperor’s New Clothes element to the music scene. But here the hype seems justified. The reverence with which people have written and spoken about the album suggests this reverence is genuine and not just keeping up with the American-Apparel-clad-Joneses. Walking into a packed Whelans I’ll have to take other people’s word on it though. So far James Blake has done little for me. Not bad, promising even, but nothing to scramble to go and see.
But people are hanging from the rafters, there has to be something to this right? After Cloud Boats settled the crowd into the right frame of mind (reportedly, I just missed them), and a suitable period for expectation to build, James Blake strolls onstage. A short, humble ‘thank you for coming’ precedes the opener ‘Unluck’. He sticks to the studio structure of the song, steady piano, falsetto voice and random beats right down to the abrupt ending which seems to false step the audience for a beat. The response from them when it comes though is ecstatic.
The set continues with skipped beats, purposely mishit keys and so-delicate-they-could-break vocals. “This is baby-making music” declares the muscly guy behind me between songs. He’s kind of right, but it’s ‘baby-making’ music in a seedy/glamorous heroin-chic kind of way. The crowd stands in awed silence, the ice in my glass rattles whenever I shift position and I feel like kid trying to eat crisps at mass. This is what having an audience is the palm of your hand means.
Now that he has sealed everyone’s attention with this terrible beauty, Blake begins to bring in the bass. Big throbbing my-right-nostril-is-vibrating bass. Now the crowd can move from gentle head movements to actual shoulder shifting. It’s hard not to write about this music without giving some of the sounds nonsensical descriptions like ‘sinister’ and ‘ominous’ but they’re the words that keep springing to mind. Maybe I read too many music reviews. At one point it sounds like Blake has remixed whale-sounds into a terrible sea-mammal nightmare. This, bizarrely, is a good thing. Maybe more music should evoke the nightmares of animals…
‘I Never Learnt To Share’ steps thing up a further notch. The fruit-machine-type noises continuously spinning over an unabating bass. The place is caked in sweat, there’s a sway to the audience now but no eyes are leaving the twenty one year old man on stage.
A few EP songs are played, more teasing notes. ‘Let’s see how long we can tip this symbol before kicking into the good stuff’. It all works, silence, or close to, then a lovely bass-y payoff. ‘Limit to your Love’ is eventually played, replete with more teasingly long breaks, and a piano line carrying a bit more edge live. ‘Wilhelm Scream’ finishes the set and brings to mind Fever Ray, he must play Electric Picnic mustn’t he?
And then that’s it. No encore but no-one seems to care. This is a palpably happy crowd. I’m not completely converted but I’ve resolved to listening to Blake a lot more, preferably on headphones for the fully immersive experience. And I’m starting to understand why the people looking for tickets were so desperate to be able to say “I was there”.
