The Colour In Anything

As with anyone complaining of love lost between pleas for it to return, it begins to become tiresome — no matter how smooth your voice may be. But Blake manages to make a whopping 17-song album transition seamlessly, holding your attention thanks to a careful execution of space between those very keys.

The effect is stark, and intensely compelling. At 17 tracks long, this is a listen that plumbs substantial depths, but in Blake’s world, time ceases to be a constraint.

While there is still plenty of those addictive sonic downpours, The Colour in Anything is arguably Blake’s most create cloudburst to date.

From its weighty subject matter to its incredibly nuanced production, The Colour in Anything is not only Blake at his best, but also his most personal. Blake's expanded his both his heart and his process here, making music with others outside of his laptop to demonstrate the growth that had led to this brilliant, fulfilling work.

It's an introspective, at times hesitant collection yet in the way most introverts allow themselves to relax within company, the more time you invest in The Colour In Anything the more readily you will discover its qualities.

Even if Colour doesn’t drastically alter Blake’s sound, it widens and refines it, keeping what made his first two records so memorable while hinting that there remains ever further room for growth.

Clocking in at 76 minutes, The Colour in Anything is Blake’s wonderfully messy dive into maximalism.

The Colour In Anything is wall-to-wall longing for old flames and tales of relationships in freefall. It’s also infinitely beautiful; a meshing of gloomy piano and club-ready sounds that show Blake still can’t quite be pinned down.

A challenging listen. But such is Blake's sonic invention and flair for extricating beauty from the murk, it's well worth sticking with. [Aug 2016, p.92]

The Colour In Anything emphasizes the element of trust that collaboration implies and its role in articulating Blake’s feelings.

The album is a heavy 17 tracks that last over 70 minutes, meaning it’s a long and intense listen, but deliberately so--loneliness is a long and intense feeling.

It’s not a perfect album--like so many, at 17 tracks it’s way too long, and there’s too little variation in tempo and mood--but it’s yet another confirmation of what can be achieved when subtlety and sensitivity are the driving forces.

The growth is more suggestive than pronounced, and is found in the details.

The result is a staggeringly impressive and confident third album from an artist who has reached the very peak of his powers.

James’ voice remains the deserving centrepiece. Still fragile, but now sounding more confident than ever, those pipes sound warmer and thicker than ever before.

Features Blake's richest and most emotionally resonant work yet.

[Blake's vocal is] magical in its evocative powers, and like Arthur Russell he can summon a sort of joyful sadness that seems to transcend the song itself. It means this album of digital anxiety and millennial unease is wrapped in something that feels both toweringly accomplished and heart-wrenchingly frail--and for that reason it should be treasured.

The permanent ache in Blake's voice is one of his most arresting qualities, but it grows tiresome as The Colour In Anything wades through its 76 minutes.

The Colour In Anything is Blake's fullest and boldest work yet. [Aug 2016, p.72]

If there’s a downside to Anything, it’s the exhaustive length: 17 heart-trying wisps-of-songs that near the 80-minute mark, akin to needing a tissue and buying a Costco pallet of Kleenex.

Compared to the self-titled debut and Overgrown, this a more graceful and denser purging, one that can soundtrack some intense wallowing or, at a low volume, throb and murmur unobtrusively in the background.

Blake's third album (all 76 minutes of it) reaches back to the abstract electronics and agile, brittle beats of his early EPs while pushing his songwriting towards new levels of sad urgent grandeur. Blake's bell-clear tenor has never sounded more wounded--or more ethereal.

These songs are Blake at his best and most sonically inventive. At 75 minutes-plus and 17 tracks, though, the whole presents a challenge at odds with the sensitivity of those romantic reveries. [#361, p.117]

The Colour in Anything, as dazzling as it often is, finds Blake sidetracked by all the things he can do and doing them coldly, rather than focusing on the few things he should.

The Colour In Anything is a good album that could have been great if Blake had been a bit more willing to edit and discard his less successful sonic experiments.

"The Colour in Anything" grows self-pitying, almost maudlin, in ways Mr. Blake has managed to avoid in the past simply by using more elusive lyrical metaphors. It is also unreasonably long: a little over an hour and a quarter.