James Blake Isn't the Sad Guy You Want Him to Be

All images by Jonno Revanche

The old cliche about anxiety is that it robs colour from your everyday experience — that all those things that once brought you joy now seem flat, distant — and finding satisfaction from them is like drawing blood from a stone. For many people who have already rushed to pigeonhole James Blake as “the guy all your other favs like” (Kanye, Beyonce) with a choirboy voice and a lush, but evidently depressing catalogue, his latest album comes as a bit of a surprise. The Colour in Anything chooses not to drown in the complexity of its conditions but embraces all of the chaotic hues and is twice the length any of his other albums. There are sunnier moments hidden behind infinitely sadder ones, and yet none of them feel inherently conflicting. This childlike return to hope in the music is mirrored on the cover of TCIA, a watercolour painting created by Quentin Blake (who is most famous for illustrating most of Roald Dahl’s books — you’ll have an “Aha!” moment when you see it.)

Many critics have said that it’s just as moody as his other work, but many of them fail to see the nuance of it; of someone who has battled misery and anxiety and accepted it. And Blake himself has said it’s more hopeful. Listening to it reminds you of that point you reach during any major struggle, when you let go of control and of those fears that are holding you back in the hopes of healing and finding peace.

Meeting Blake in Wendy Whiteley’s garden, the memorial to her late husband Brett Whiteley, was a natural fit to these vibes. He’s just flown in from Splendour — “one of the biggest festivals I’ve ever seen in my life!” — and is calm, softly spoken and undeniably friendly. His humility and emotional intelligence walk a dotted line together and come to the surface the most when he talks about the situations that lead to his new album, arguably his most comprehensive and layered to date.

Noisey: How are you, and how does it feel to be in Australia? Do you have any sort of associations with Sydney or perhaps the country, more widely?

James Blake: Really good, and I do have associations in the sense that I have family here, so that's great and I get to see them. Making the trip to Australia…. It's nice being able to do both things, rather than having to get an independent 24 hour flight every time you want to see your family. It doesn't happen very often so it's nice to do that. My connection to it is mostly family but we've always had a good time here. I mean, the weather has something to do with that.

That seems to be the general consensus from outsiders. The garden that we're in now, and especially the ocean nearby when it isn't barricaded with fences for renovations, is very reminiscent of the album cover. It's definitely quite distant from the aesthetic themes you've explored in the past. Obviously the artist, Quentin Blake, who is responsible for all this art that people associate with their childhood, is a really poignant choice. What kind of parallels do you draw between Quentin Blake and the moods he explores in his work, and the feelings present on The Colour in Anything?

I hear what you're getting at. With Quentin Blake there's a certain nostalgia to his work, well for me there is, and I think that it's interesting that a lot of the problems I had to overcome with myself in that year, or two years or three years, took root in my childhood and in my upbringing and… He was part of my visual landscape within that moment. Actually I find the artwork hard to look at sometimes, well not anymore, because I feel really good these days. But when I just finished my record I found it really difficult to look at that artwork. It actually sent me back, not to my childhood, but to the album writing process which was difficult. If anything, I just wanted to not look at it for a while, but now I love it. The memory becomes fond and you understand that it's part of the coming together of what you are now. But for a while it was nice to avoid it. It's really tumultuous, that sky, and the trees are so cryptic.

And I mean… When you think about Australian and British narratives in pop culture, those themes are very much tied together and shared between both countries. It's almost like we're training children to accept the unusual or to acknowledge grief. Sort of on that note, I think it's funny how there's this cliche, at least in the western world, that being depressed or sad is immediately the best grounds for creativity. It actually feels like it's the opposite for me — it completely crushes it.

You're right, it's absolutely not. It stops creativity in its tracks. It can give you the self doubt that means you don't produce anything at all, nevermind something you can commit to. it's not in your nature anymore to do so, because of that kind of web of anxiety that eventually brings you down. You can't be committal to anything.

And I guess with anxiety comes that immense self criticality — one catastrophe snowballs into another.

Absolutely. Overthought. Predictions or outcomes that might never happen, predicting that people might not like a certain way you did something — these are all symptoms of anxiety, and they are completely counter-productive.

Do you feel like that's a huge cultural thing that probably needs to change? Those associations with sadness being the best source of inspiration? The first thing I think of is how people valorise Kurt Cobain…

I definitely think so. And one of the reasons that idea has been perpetuated is probably things like the 27 club. People believing in the stereotype of the tortured artist. I mean, there have been tortured artists, great ones, and there have been great, happy artists.

A lot of people really like to hear a certain type of music and slap it with the label of "moody" or "depressing" when it's reality. Those songs could be a result of a healthy process of acceptance.

I think they’re probably depressed and moody. When music critics called Radiohead "depressing" and words like that to describe utterly beautiful music which is inspiring and uplifting, they made a mistake in failing to recognise what they were seeing in themselves. I feel like that with my music too, not to compare myself obviously. But I feel sometimes a little bit misrepresented by people who don't get it.

Absolutely. Even in the years you've been active and have been successful, artists have listed you as a major influence, artists from Down Under like Lorde for example…. How does it feel to be legacized in that way, especially as someone who isn't seen as a celebrity but is appreciated very much on the basis of their music, something that is becoming increasingly rare?

I am flattered by anyone who likes my music and talks about it… Or anybody that covers it. It's just really lovely that people take the music into themselves like that and want to express something with it. It's nice to see it changing form as well. Legacy is important to me, not so much nowadays. It's funny, I used to be so much more concerned with what I was leaving behind and how perfect it should be, and I'm not so worried about that anymore.

Is that freeing?

Yeah it is. So watch out for my reggaeton album coming out in 2017 [laughs].

People might have associated you for being involved within dance music, which has changed pretty dramatically. How do you feel about that world, that community at the moment, and all of it's respective associations and sub-cultures?

Good question. I don't think about it, and haven't in years. It's really liberating actually. The dance music community is actually a very complex thing to talk about in a lot of ways because it involves several different forms of criticism and appreciation. So on the one hand you've got clubs, which are just great on the whole with lots of people enjoying themselves. There's less self consciousness because the lights are off, and people are having a good time and you’re able to contribute to that setting. And I love going out dancing and I love being in clubs. On the other side of things, there's a more critical side of it, where people, because of their narrow taste, can become quite critical of almost anything.

It feels very much like an ego-fuelled circlejerk….

Well yeah, it does feel like sometimes like people are not listening to my music in a wider context, because the corner that they are operating in doesn't look at music that way. When I've shifted and moved into new territories, there's been a very stiff reception and that is frustrating.

You almost have to take it as a compliment.

Yeah! When people say they prefer my old stuff I take it as a huge compliment, and that is big in the dance world. It's become a cliche. Well, I'm happy for you to stagnate in 2012 along with the rest of post-dubstep or whatever the fuck it's called [laughs]. I just love to move on, and I have to musically, because it's the way I can move on personally. Just to finish off, the flipped side of it is to offer a balanced perspective, because it's not all negative in that world. People write about dance music with a fervour because there's so much coming out. When you hear music in a club it has a special effect on you because it's playing very loud and hopefully there's an amazing moment that occurs, but it's different to the way a lot of music is written about. It can be a very supportive community for young producers and there's always a conversation going on about new sounds and it breathes an… Obsession with new, which I think is really healthy. That's a really good part of it. It would be bad advice to tell someone to not listen to those critics, because it's good sometimes to figure out what you want to do next by using what they say. Another reason is because you can't not do that as a 21 year old, you can't not listen. It’s impossible. It's so hard to not be self conscious.

James Blake plays Thebarton Theatre, Adelaide, tonight, supported by Mark Pritchard. Tickets are available here.

Listen to The Colour in Anything on Spotify, and buy it here.

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