The title of James Blake’s Trying Times is quickly revealed to be a nod not just to the state of the world, but to the British singer-songwriter’s psyche. While he explored love as an obsessive longing on 2013’s Overgrown, and as a tool for domestic grounding on 2019’s Assume Form, tracks like “Death of Love” presents it as a survival directive. Over warbly sub bass, Blake sets the album’s stakes without mincing words: “I don’t know how we got here/But I think we might be sleeping/I think we might be walking/To the death of love.”
Other songs take on a more upbeat tone. With sustained organ and arpeggiated guitars, the churchy soundscapes of the waltzy “I Had a Dream She Took My Hand” and the title track give Blake’s message the feel of a spiritual superpower. “You’re the life force/I would die for/Stay alive for/As we go through trying times,” he sings on the latter.
The album’s philosophical centerpiece, “Make Something Up” is a frustrated examination of the role of creativity in a world seemingly out of good ideas. If all the problems of our age are “unprecedented,” Blake seems to wonder, why can’t the solutions be too? With its jangly, Steve Lacy-esque chords and rudimentary drum beat, the track itself feels stylistically trapped between something ruggedly alive and sleekly programmed.
Blake’s artistic duality—electronic experimentalist and gospel balladeer—is on full display here. “Didn’t Come to Argue,” which pairs beautiful grand piano with glitchy backing vocals, stands out both in its lush, intimate orchestration and seamless beat switch to a lowkey house groove. Altogether, it feels like a distillation of Blake’s aesthetic and ethos: “I don’t have ambitions/I don’t care what’s ahead/Or how far I should climb/Now I’m stuck in the middle of time.”
“Days Go By,” centered around a charming vocal sample and soft pop flute textures that drift through a hazy blend of glitch hop and house, similarly dwells on modern life’s creeping inertia. “I can’t keep blaming the city/I can’t keep saying I’m busy/Days on days go by/And nothing gets done,” Blake confesses, capturing the anxiety of the passage of time.
Structurally, the back half of Trying Times begins to mirror that sense of aimlessness. “Obsession” feels more like an interlude than a song, while the otherwise club-ready “Rest of Your Life” arrives with a long, repetitive intro that disrupts the album’s flow. By the time the pretty but slight “Feel It Again” arrives, the momentum has started to wane.
And yet, it’s in these scattered spaces where Blake often thrives. “Through the High Wire” initially feels unmoored—experimental, jarring, and abrupt—before a vocal melody emerges halfway through that’s simultaneously uplifting and melancholic. The robotic filter on Blake’s voice gives the song an off-kilter quality, while the gospel sample running beneath anchors it sonically and thematically to the rest of the album.
In times of crisis, art can function as an escape or a protest, but most of it carries on, indifferent to the moment it exists in. Trying Times is something altogether different. It arrives like a natural, unforced expression of hope. It may not be Blake’s most musically or emotionally commanding, but it has a clarity, honesty, and depth that make it a welcome addition to both his discography and the anxious times we’re living in.
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