James Blake at SWG3: A Long Set That Swings Between the Song and the Club

The tension running through a James Blake show is not loud against quiet. It is the songwriter against the producer, and which of them gets to lead. At SWG3 in Glasgow the answer kept changing. A backing band held every beat, Blake moved between guitar, keys and his own voice, and the room stayed silent enough to hear the decision being made.

He is a rare cover artist in that the songs stop sounding borrowed. Here that meant The Verve’s “The Drugs Don’t Work”, rebuilt at cathedral scale, and Feist’s “Limit to Your Love”, which long ago became his. “Death Of Love” folded in Leonard Cohen’s “You Want It Darker” without straining for gravity. Between them, “Make Something Up” and the gloomy drift of “Say What You Will” showed where the band sharpened him rather than smoothed him out.

Not all of it was built for every listener. A ten-minute rave near the end was the set’s biggest risk, and the crowd took it up regardless. His own material held the centre: “I Had A Dream She Took My Hand”, and a “Retrograde” delivered with real force.

Midway through, he asked whether a shout of “here come the horses” was a Scottish thing. It was not, and he took the clarification warmly, as he took the city. He signed off with “Vincent”, calling it “the saddest song ever written” — a choice that says as much about his instincts as anything played before it.