Still Life

Irish singer Perry Blake’s second album, 1999’s Still Life, goes a long way towards explaining his rapturous European reviews. The U.S. has been slow to embrace Blake but his timeless music can be discovered anytime. His influences include Nick Drake, Leonard Cohen, Scott Walker and David Sylvian, whose brother, Steve Jansen (both formerly of the group Japan), contributed to this album. The ethereal flow is reminiscent of the tranquil later works of Mark Hollis and Talk Talk. The orchestrations and Blake’s low mumble of a voice here (as opposed to the striking falsetto he uses more often on later recordings) make for a deep meditative work that occasionally rises to a sweet bump in tempo and timbre. “If I Let You In” is an early blaxploitation tune given a modern nightclub groove and filtered through a 4AD Records-type soft-focus lens. Francoise Hardy duets on the elegiac “War In France.” Songs such as “Sandriam,” “This Time It’s Goodbye” and “Give Me Back My Childhood” work on a nearly subliminal level offering a sense of luminous sadness that is half in love with easeful rhythms and style.