"Friends That Break Your Heart" - James Blake

Friends That Break Your Heart is a beautiful, Compelling and like lying down in an empty cabin while a warm summer light shines through your window.

After listening to "The Colour In Anything" I found it odd how James was able to make an album that has the same qualities I loved about that record but sounding like a much warmer and comforting world. The album isn't just happy and comforting though, There's still many instances of the sadness and pain that was present in "The Colour In Anything" but it's as though the coldness is absent and it feels like the Summer version of the cold and winter like world that was "The Colour In Anything".

I loved A lot of the songs off this album. The biggest highlights to me are "Famous Last Words", "Life Is Not The Same", "Coming Back (Feat. SZA)", "Foot Forward", "Say What You Will", "Friends That Break Your Heart" and "If I'm Insecure". The others were still really great and I liked them a lot too but those highlights are amazing to me. The Song "Life Is Not The Same" has this Lo-Fi feeling to it and I found out while listening to the album that "Joji" produced the track which makes sense due to Joji's music having this Lo-Fi sound in his music aswell. I loved the sound of this track but that's probably because I love joji's music aswell. The Song "I'm So Blessed Your Mine" Is a really odd but cool case where the sound of the song makes me take the lyrics as something completely different from what I would have thought if it was just a regular instrumental. The song has this undertone of darkness to it. It has this underlying horror sound to it like the strings at near the end and the minor key it changes to when he sings "I'm So Blessed You're Mine" It's so obviously intentional that I had to study what the song was actually trying to say and that's really awesome! I'm really just here to review the album but I kind of feel the need to say my theory of what I think the song is about, So "away we go".

I think the relationship this song is talking about is not a good one, They're lying to themselves and just saying "I'm so blessed you're mine" when in reality that's just what they're telling themselves instead of facing the truth that they don't want to be together. There's really little to go off of with this song with only 12 lines of lyrics that aren't just "I'm so blessed you're mine" and only 4 of them changing on the second verse. The line "You never saw a life with me, but away we go" makes me think that the person he's talking about didn't want to be with him and the line "Never saw you coming, But I saw the smoke" is saying that he started seeing signs that things weren't going to work out but one thing of note about that line, when you google the lyrics for "I'm So Blessed You're Mine" It says "Never saw you crying" as opposed to "Never saw you coming" even though you can hear that James said "Never saw you coming". Could just be a mistake on "LyricFind"'s part which it probably is. But anyways it's really cool how the sound of the song was dark and so It forced me to look deeper into the lyrics to get what's going on because it's incredibly subtle and I'll probably decypher it even more and come to different conclusions as time goes on.

The song "Friends That Break Your Heart" Is an incredibly sad and heartbreaking part of this album. The ambient synths, the plucking guitars and James' Vocals are incredibly effective to making this song hit hard and the lyrics are just as effective. It's one of the most somber, Sad and beautiful tracks of the album. I would say it's the most but then there's the last song "If I'm Insecure". The song starts with a melody and sound that immedietly made me want to lay on the floor and just stare at the ceiling and think. It does such an amazing job at making me sad that it's actually stupid. If I was more susceptible to crying from media I don't think I could handle this song and "Friends That Break You're Heart" But honestly I think "Friends That Break You're Heart" would do most of the heavy work just cause "If I'm Insecure" has a much more "inspirational" Chorus than the rest of the song but honestly I really wish it didn't. This would be my favorite sad song of all time but the choruses kinda take away from the sadness of the track and I wish it was just that melody the whole 5 minutes because I love it so much. The song is still incredible but it actually makes me more sad that the song isn't sadder lol.

Now for the complaints. The song "Frozen" is the only song I didn't really like. The song "Frozen (Feat. JID & SwaVay)" is a pretty experimental track with this pitched down vocal chop and plucks throughout the whole song. It's a really interesting song but I just didn't really vibe with it. There's also a part in SwaVay's verse where he says "Okay, maybe you're right, I am crazy, I'm sorry. Or maybe I'm not" It might not seem too bad to most people but when I heard it during the song It just felt stupid to me. Like saying "I did this, Or did I?" Is just silly to me but maybe that's just me.

With all that being said. This album is amazing. It's got an incredible track list and my least favorite songs aren't even bad songs by any means but rather just songs I personally didn't like too much. I might go as far as to say that the saddest songs on this record are more effective than the saddest songs on "The Colour In Anything". I really loved this album and I can't wait for the next James Blake Project. "Friends That Break Your Heart" By James Blake get's an

8/10

Favorites: Famous Last Words, Life Is Not The same, Coming Back, I'm So Blessed You're Mine, Foot Forward, Say What You Will, Friends That Break You're Heart, If I'm Insecure

Least Favorites: Frozen

(This review was written on April 25th, 2022)