Pochette de Trying Times, septieme album de James Blake. Credit : Good Boy Records.
Three years after “Playing Robots Into Heaven,” James Blake is back with “Trying Times,” his seventh studio album, released March 13 on his own label, Good Boy Records. It’s the first record he’s put out in full independence, after parting ways with Polydor, the major that had backed him since the start of his career. That shift in status shows in the music itself: looser, more sprawling, and arguably more personal than anything he’s released in years.
A record made in freedom, produced with his partner
Thirteen tracks, forty-seven minutes: “Trying Times” isn’t out to prove anything through sheer scale. The album was executive produced by Jameela Jamil, Blake’s longtime partner — a rare level of involvement for a record of this size. The result, by most critical accounts, is the most varied record of his career: the fragmented electronics that built his reputation are still there, but so are more organic, more directly sung, more openly emotional detours.
Only two guests punctuate the record: American singer Monica Martin on “Didn’t Come to Argue,” and British rapper Dave on “Doesn’t Just Happen,” the album’s centerpiece, co-produced with Dom Maker (of Mount Kimbie) and YouthXL. The two had already crossed paths on Dave’s 2025 album “The Boy Who Played the Harp” — this new collaboration closes the loop, in a way.
“Death of Love,” or Leonard Cohen reimagined
The record’s standout moment remains “Death of Love,” the lead single shared back in January. James Blake samples “You Want It Darker,” Leonard Cohen’s late-career statement released weeks before his death in 2016. It’s a vanishingly rare sample clearance: by Blake’s own account, it’s one of the only times Cohen’s son Adam, who now oversees his father’s estate, has signed off on reusing his work this way. The track arrives with a live performance video, Blake singing surrounded by a choir in a deliberately stark office setting that contrasts with the grandeur of the sample underneath.
The album’s second single, “I Had a Dream She Took My Hand,” heads in almost the opposite direction: a fragile piece of electronic soul built around a sample of “It Was Only a Dream” by California group Thee Sinseers. It’s one of the record’s quietest moments, a far cry from the previous track’s grandeur, and arguably one that best captures the balance Blake is chasing here — staying recognizable while constantly slipping out of the expectations placed on him.
Thirteen tracks, a genuine break from the past
The full tracklist gives a sense of how ambitious the project is: “Walk Out Music” opens the record, followed by “Death of Love,” “I Had a Dream She Took My Hand,” then the title track “Trying Times.” Next come “Make Something Up,” “Didn’t Come to Argue” with Monica Martin, “Days Go By,” “Doesn’t Just Happen” with Dave, “Obsession,” “Rest of Your Life,” “Through the High Wire,” “Feel It Again,” and finally “Just a Little Higher” to close things out.
- Walk Out Music
- Death of Love
- I Had a Dream She Took My Hand
- Trying Times
- Make Something Up
- Didn’t Come to Argue (feat. Monica Martin)
- Days Go By
- Doesn’t Just Happen (feat. Dave)
- Obsession
- Rest of Your Life
- Through the High Wire
- Feel It Again
- Just a Little Higher
The rest of the album keeps digging in the same direction without ever repeating itself. “Trying Times,” the title track, and “Make Something Up” hold onto the fragmented structures that built Blake’s reputation since his self-titled debut in 2011. “Days Go By” and “Through the High Wire” lean toward fuller, almost orchestral arrangements in places, while “Obsession” and “Feel It Again,” two of the record’s shortest cuts, work almost like interludes — breathing room between the more constructed pieces. “Rest of Your Life” and closer “Just a Little Higher” return to the introspective tone that’s always been Blake’s signature, from the start of his career through “Overgrown,” his Mercury Prize-winning 2013 album.
For anyone who’s followed James Blake since his 2011 self-titled debut, “Trying Times” marks a different kind of milestone: that of an artist who no longer answers to a label, and who uses that freedom to reach for emotional territory he’d rarely explored this directly before. Critics have received the record warmly, calling it one of the most accomplished entries in his recent catalog, carried by a range of forms his previous albums didn’t always allow for. Several reviews singled out the sequencing in particular, noting how the record moves between its heavier, sample-driven centerpieces and its sparser, more intimate cuts without ever feeling like two different albums stitched together.
That balancing act is also, in its own way, the clearest sign of what independence has allowed Blake to do here: take the time to let a thirteen-track record breathe, rather than trim it down to fit a label’s idea of a single, tidy statement.
Why this record matters
“Trying Times” isn’t just another entry in an already dense discography — it’s the first fully autonomous statement from an artist who has spent more than a decade building one of the most recognizable vocabularies in sung electronic music. Between a Leonard Cohen sample that almost never happened and a Dave collaboration that closes a friendly loop, the record holds together wildly different pieces without ever losing sight of what’s always made Blake distinctive: a fragile voice set over productions that, themselves, never waver.
