Blackfield - IV

Blackfield IV, the fourth studio record by Israeli-British art-rock band Blackfield, has left me wondering. Wondering about how I should be seeing the band from now on. Now that Steven Wilson has well-nigh departed from co-leading and left Aviv Geffen to his own inspiration, the latter has got a wide field to make his favourite kind of music the way he, Geffen, sees fit.

IV might leave many a Blackfield fan scratching their head in embarrassment, thinking if this is Blackfield at all. The gloriously depressed, gorgeously brooding first Blackfield album is all but palpable if your pour over the fourth effort. And yet, IV does possess a uniqueness of its own – the uniqueness of being a Geffen solo album that in truth it is. Having been offered to steer the band the Geffen way, the Israeli rock rebel has done several things. As if  to mark the transition, he brought along Anathema’s Vincent Cavanagh, Mercury Rev’s Jonathan Donahue and the legendary Suede’s Brett Anderson to add their trademark vocals to three of the albums eleven compositions (“X-ray”, “The Only Fool Is Me”, “Firefly”, respectively). Of these three contributions, I’ve been really struck by Cavanagh’s love-story romantic vocals on “X-ray”. Just top-notch. However, Cavanagh, Anderson and Donahue, for all their superb command of the material offered to them, simply don’t match what we expect of Blackfield. These songs belong elsewhere. Previously, we could have entrusted only Steven and Aviv with the arduous task of singing Blackfield. 

Characteristically, Wilson sings on only two songs and contributes no songwriting or lyrics to this album, limiting himself to the mixing engineer’s and producer’s duty. 

Clocking at less than 31:29, this is a very short recording indeed, even by pop standards, with no song reaching the four-minute mark. This is Geffen’s musical philosophy, in a nutshell: a collection of catchy grievous tunes, stylistically like those on his solo albums, but a departure from the melancholy “light-prog” works of the debut and sophomore records. “Springtime”, for instance, bears in parts a similarity to the song “All Right” from Geffen’s first solo English-language LP. “Sense of Insanity” sounds as close as Geffen could get to a straightforward rock anthem from his rallying stadium gigs in the 90s. On the whole, there is a perceived continuity with the third LP, 2011’s Welcome To My DNA, even though this new record boasts more vibe, upbeat, is less aggressive and angry and noticeably more diverse. The third Blackfield album segues into the fourth as a very new sound begins to mould itself. Interestingly, but expectedly, the only two tracks on the album which, to my mind, revoke the ghost of early Blackfield, the intro “Pills” and a touchy ballad “Jupiter”, are sung by Wilson. Maybe, it is his voice that we find missing on both number three and four. “Kissed by the Devil”, “Lost Souls” and “Faking” are really typically Geffen works and would fit easily in any of his solo releases. I found them (as, after all, all of the songs) gradually taking hold on me. “After The Rain” is, perhaps, the only track which has left me openly disappointed. Well-made, with some dub step thrown in, it just breaks radically with Blackfield’s time-sanctified tradition of making the closing track a stand out piece of genius. This one is merely a non-essential closer.

Unsurprisingly, most of us will judge any Wilson-involving record, Blackfield or otherwise, through the lense of Steven Wilson, his apporoach, his progressive guru’s vision, his production. However, I have stopped to ask myself an honest question: Should we? Let Blackfield navigate where the present is taking it, this being ordinary logic simply because there is less Wilson on the album now, believe it or not. Less Wilson means more Geffen; by the law of conservation of energy, Blackfield’s creativity has left nowhere, but simply changed shape, swapping one mastermind for the other one around. Geffen starting to dominate the latter two records only serves to balance the first two, ‘classic’ outputs, choreographed by Wilson, which, moreover, used to sound more in the vein of the Lightbulb Sun-era Porcupine Tree with a colouring of Near-Eastern pop-rock. Geffen has never ceased to be Geffen, a markedly different musical prodigy that he is. Having him force his musical personality into something un-Geffen for the sake of upkeeping what Wilson used to contribute is at least unjust. Some Wilson fans (including myself, to make a clean breast of things) are having trouble accepting this change of the musical vehicle, if you like. Nonetheless, there seems to be born something new of the brainchild as it becomes a major creative channel for Geffen. As he cheerfully confesses in the album presentation on the band’s overhauled website,

Wilson is for him like a big brother who now gives him more room for his own posters to pin around. What is put out as a result is very emotional, groovy, melody-driven music sporting poignant lyrics that deal with themes of loss, loneliness, insanity, faking feelings and ultimate hope in a sweetly Geffen-esque way, electrocuting the listener with a quick charge of emotional assault to make an unwavering statement. After all, unlike many more ‘experimental’ and ‘progressive’ and ‘underground’ bands and musicians, Aviv Geffen has long since worked out his musical approach and is staying true to it, unyielding.

To conclude, there’s probably no right answering the question of what the true Blackfield legacy is, but I’ll try anyway by theorising that the Blackfield philosophy lies not in the music, but in the sort of statement that is made: A bittersweet desolate outlook on the life full of grief and broken hearts, packaged in the appropriate short rock song format with a strong accent on what is delivered through this vehicle. But the how may vary. And Geffen has so far not betrayed this, let us say, Blackfield lifestyle.

Summing up, I’d anticipated Blackfield IV to turn out the record that it is. I had accurately predicted its closeness to the “DNA” album even before I’d heard Wilson-sung “Pills”, the first glimpse of it. I’d grieved and cringed over the change. Just because I knew who was the steersman now. But I’ve got over this. And I can’t be too satisfied with myself that I have since learned to tolerate this new musical phenomenon and be musically liberal.