Gig Review: James Blake at The Olympia Theatre

We crowd into the pit at the front of the stage where, just moments before, Mark Pritchard set the tone for the night with a set full of moving ambience. A man who has worked with the likes of Thom Yorke and Bibio in the last 12 months, Mark Pritchard is a suitable accompaniment for the main act.

When the Most Revered James Blake finally comes on stage, die-hard fans fawn at the sight of him – the most eager appear on the verge of fainting. Self-effacing Blake takes it all in his stride, sitting down to his keyboards armed with a mug of tea, ready to cut through the rabble of the crowd with his enchanting sounds.

Intentionally or not, the London artist has found himself in the perfect Dublin venue for this type of gig. The highly ornate backdrop of the Olympia theatre serves as a counterpoint to Blake’s simple stage arrangements. Much like the music itself, everything on stage is minimalist and deconstructed. Three raised platforms serve to accommodate Blake, his drummer Ben, and guitarist Rob. You won’t find any props here, no gimmicky; it certainly wouldn’t fit the occasion.

Blake begins the night with ‘Always’, from new album The Colour in Anything. It’s a suitable introductory song, building as it does from a simple drum beat to its synth-bursting crescendo. This leads into ‘Life Round Here’, one of the choicer songs from the ground-breaking Overgrown album and a perfect opportunity for Blake to display the emotion he can harbour in his beautiful vocals (to think that back in his producing days no one would had ever pictured him as a singer…).

After the fourth song, the lights go up and the crowd erupts as Blake finally turns to address us. He thanks us for coming, comments sincerely at how happy he is to be back in Dublin, and assures us that he’s going to play as much new music as possible. He doesn’t let us down with that promise, firing out ‘Choose Me’ and ‘I Need a Forest Fire’, two songs resplendent with sentiment.

As the set reaches its midway point, Blake holds every ear as he exacts full command of his instruments. He reminds us at one point (and it’s worth mentioning again) that this is 100% a live performance and every sound he’s making is produced from scratch. At times the dim lights on stage focus on Blake and we find him hunched over a keyboard, seemingly in communion with himself as he makes him music. This is what marks James Blake as a true artist. He owes no debt to his audience, doesn’t kow-tow or vamp with us, his only debt is to the music itself. Every crooning lyric or musical note seems less like an effort at crowd-pleasing and more like him channelling a higher power, trying to transport us to new musical realms.

Then comes ‘Retrograde’. The harmonising humming is looped at the beginning as we move in-step with the Percussion Pad’s drum beat. We’re reminded why this is Blake’s most famous song when the overawed synth kicks in and washes over us like a tsunami. You hold your breath for the entire song, transfixed.

Blake ‘finishes’ the night with ‘The Wilhelm Scream’ and walks off with his band to rapturous applause. When he comes back for the encore, he’s alone and the atmosphere is suddenly very intimate. He slides his hands onto the keys and launches into a cover of Joni Mitchell’s ‘A Case of You’ – a song which few voices can do justice to, and only one that can do it better than the original.

The loop is brought out again for his actual final song, ‘Measurements’. Calling for complete silence, he loops the five-lines of the song again and again, each time making his voice an octave higher, each time making the lyrics carry new weight, endowing them with new feeling.
The lights go down as the song continues to sound out. James Blake leaves the stage in darkness, a salutatory raised hand just visible in the darkness. When things finally end, we walk out in a daze.