"I'm the opposite of punk. I've subdued a generation" James Blake told the Guardian last week. He said it with a laugh, apparently, but it's patently not true.
Blake's music is as powerful and non-conformist as any punk music, pushing the edges of what beautiful music sounds like.
It might be introspective and sonically focused, but it's also headily emotional and brittle and uncomfortable. He plucks at themes of alienation and being disillusioned by the spectre of daily life, but there's nothing subdued about Blake's work.
On his third album, the 27-year-old Brit is poetic and strong, his voice burning with frustration, or cracking with emotion, as often as it is tender or ethereal, and he manages to be bleak and haunting without ever wallowing in sadness.
Blake has described the album as a "coming of age", and indeed it seems that this album has even more colours, more shades of the human condition, beyond simple heartbreak or loneliness.
Radio Silence offers a catchy musing on the life long quandary of how we ever truly know another person, Timeless evokes an icy, white, wintry landscape filled with accusations, F.O.R.E.V.E.R charts the gentle evolution of a relationship, I Need A Forest Fire is a stunning collaboration with Bon Iver, and My Willing Heart is a truly high point, a perfectly modern torch song.
