Two Deliverances: Canty and Skeleten

On "enigmatic London producers," a unified theory of Australia electro-festival acts and the return of "post-James Blake core"

She couldn’t believe that I didn’t like James Blake. She also couldn’t believe I was damn near 45 years old, and thus, not a millennial.

These two things, of course, are inextricably related: James Blake is probably the least famous of the bunch, but still solidly in the “this blew my mind in college” millennial canon of Tyler, Frank and Tame Impala, basically, anything that A$AP Rocky threw on his albums to prove he’s a polyglot musical genius and not someone whose tastes align with the top line of every Goldenvoice festival in existence.

But even if I technically identify as Gen X, the one time in my life I exclusively wrote about music occurred between 2011 and 2013, where the millennials were truly putting their stamp on Pitchfork and James Blake was the quintessential Pitchfork artist, someone who emerged from abstract, highbrow electronic and hewed towards music criticism’s permanent true north - arty R&B.

Every now and again, our editors would pose a “this or that?”-type question to the staff when there were two huge albums about to drop, or a couple big ones in a certain genre, essentially asking which one would define our thing for that time. This absolutely happened with chillwave, specifically, an email that inquired about the comparative merits of Washed Out’s Life of Leisure EP, Neon Indian’s Psychic Chasms and Memory Tapes’ Seek Magic. Hard to say whether we “got that right,” since Life of Leisure is the defining document of the genre and Seek Magic is probably the best chillwave album ever made. Then again, Psychic Chasms got the highest score and Neon Indian had, by far, the best career.

Conversely, in early 2011, the big Q1 releases were James Blake’s self-titled, presumably the culmination of his year-long, dizzying rise up the ranks; months earlier, we bundled various of his EPs and put it in the top ten of the 2010 year-end list. The working definition of “automatic 9+,” all he had to do was stick the landing. The other was… Cut Copy’s Zonoscope, a highly-anticipated follow-up to In Ghost Colours, a fucking amazing time capsule of deep-V American Apparel T, clean indie sleaze. But let’s be real here, I don’t think anyone really viewed Cut Copy as artistes, In Ghost Colours was clearly the album they were put on this earth to make and anything that rose to the standard of “solid follow-up” would be a pleasant surprise, especially since DFA didn’t seem to be involved anymore - they were basically an “Australian Coachella-core” band at that point.

Obviously tipping my hand, Zonoscope is the one that rose to the occasion, even if “Australian Coachella-core” sounds like damning with faint praise; Free Your Mind proves just how difficult that is to pull off.

But as with above, James Blake was obviously the “right choice” as the one that would matter more, even if it isn’t really as good. In one of their extremely rare and memorable quasi-pans, All Music Guide seems to be the only place that shares my opinion on James Blake - it has a few songs that could completely rewire the way you think about music, “The Wilhelm Scream” and “I Never Learnt to Share” are actually incredible, as is the sub-bass on “Limit to Your Love.”

Otherwise, it feels like a collection of stems and experiments, or, in a parlance that wasn’t readily available in 2011 - “vibes.” I found a lot of the textures actively annoying, his voice having this weird, curdled sound, a kimchi Bill Withers or something. Fourteen years later, that’s still where I land. By the time he stepped out as a real songwriter on Overgrown, I was already sorta tired of his shtick even if I did find some charm in him giving RZA a chance to drop Bobby Digital bars fifteen years past their prime. Then he made that 2016 album with a cover straight out of the Tooth & Nail catalog, I liked the opener because it sounded like him doing “dental plan b/w Lisa needs braces.” Much like his partner Jameela Jamil, he has a tendency to say some objective admirable things in the most annoying way possible and I suppose by this point, he’s probably wrapped back around to being underrated somehow.