The Daily Spin II

James Blake | Overgrown

Welcome back to the Daily Spin. For the uninitiated, this is the series in which I review an album every day of 2025.

As was the case two years ago, my favorite song from each album can be found at the playlist linked here.

Album: Overgrown (2013)

Artist: James Blake

Link:

With Overgrown, James Blake staked his claim as one of the premier producers for the modern era of the burgeoning crossover between hip-hop, electronica, and indie music - three very distinct forces coming together in one beautiful but hard-to-finesse combination.

Few have done it as well as Blake - it’s what landed him combinations with artists spanning from Bon Iver (‘I Need A Forest Fire’) to Metro Boomin (‘Hummingbird’), a hallmark of the versatility present in all of his work.

Blake rightfully caught some flack for some of his comments prior to this album’s release back in the day, making the sort of haughty ‘I’m above all the riff-raff’ chatter as a way to sneer at contemporaries of the time like Skrillex and other mainstream dubstep artists - Blake saw himself as a visionary and standard-bearer for a new era of the genre, one that everyone could listen to without the, as he put it, ‘frat-boy’ sensibilities.

Despite the cap-tipping m’musician energy of that debacle, this album rips - it’s easy to forgive an awkward misstep when this is wall-to-wall bangers, soul and gospel influences and jazz touches battling for center stage as a synthetic world of sound swirls around your ears. Above it all, Blake tells a story about falling in and out of love, learning that delicate balance that strikes so perfect - and the versatility of mediums on which he’s able to convey that feeling is so impressive, striking perfectly whether quiet or loud.

Rating: 9/10

Best Tracks: Retrograde, Life Round Here

Worst Tracks: Take A Fall For Me