Popcorn Noises

James Blake - “The Wilhelm Scream”

I think James Blake is lying. I think he does know about his dreams and his love, and that the resignation of his soul-inflected lines here are, in many ways, a self-pitying cop-out. Taken on their own, they’re the songwriting equivalent of bleary, inebriated pre-dawn sobs. But Blake also knows a thing or two about using textures to body emotions and about putting his thin croak of a voice to go use. It (and, by extension, he) is too beleaguered to carry this song on its own, so he props it up with an electronic crutch as blunted beats pound out his hobbling, asymmetrical footsteps. How this music ever came to be a point of contention about style and authenticity is beyond me (it has something to do with the word “dubstep,” but who really cares what that is, amiright?). This is sad bastard music—if not in form then certainly in function—and it mopes gloriously. James Blake is one of this year’s reminders that heartbreak is an inexhaustible creative well, and that 90% of the job is knowing how to use the right tools.

runner-up: “Lindesfarne I & II”