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All the Lost Souls est le deuxième album studio de James Blunt, sorti le 17 septembre 2007. Il fait suite à son premier album de 2004, Back to Bedlam, qui a connu un énorme succès. Le premier single extrait de l'album est "1973", qui a commencé à être diffusé à la radio le 23 juillet 2007. Plusieurs chansons de l'album ont été interprétées lors des concerts de la tournée 2006, notamment "1973", "I Really Want You", "Annie" et "I Can't Hear The Music". Son groupe de tournée, composé de Paul Beard (claviers et chant), Ben Castle (guitare et chant), Malcolm Moore (guitare basse et chant) et Karl Brazil (batterie et percussions), a soutenu Blunt sur le nouvel album. Tom Rothrock revient en tant que producteur ; Rothrock a également produit Back to Bedlam. Blunt a également interprété la chanson "Same Mistake" lors de sa prestation au concert Live Earth à Londres. L'album a reçu des critiques mitigées et positives, et a atteint la première place dans plus de vingt pays.
User Album Review
Sometimes it really would be easier to just walk away from something like this. Whatever is said in print makes no odds. A third world debt-ridding amount of copies will be shifted of this album by the man who remains either a paragon of ‘sensitive’ singer songwriting to his fanbase, or a piece of cockney rhyming slang to the rest of the world. This is the most depressing thing about All The Lost Souls: We can warn you, but will you listen? Faced with a slew of angry Bluntophiles baying about the fact that we’re snobs/haven’t listened to the album more than once/don’t understand his poor sensitive soul, what can you say? He's entirely capable of writing a tune. Two or three of these tracks are reasonably catchy and uplifting, in a Chris-Martin-on-an-off-day kinda way. But All The Lost Souls is actually an album that gets LESS effective with every listen. It’s full of shallowness masquerading as insight.
Still, let’s count the ways that 'Blunty' fails to please. Firstly the voice: an androgynous warble that has a limited emotive power over three minutes. After an hour of listening to it exclaim platitudes and clichés over plucked strings and Elton-lite keys, drowning kittens seems like a really fine way to spend the afternoon. Secondly the lyrics: All The Lost Souls is presumably a paean to the heartbreaking sadness of human existence and the life-affirming power of James’ words. But being urged by the posh ex-Army tyke to 'shine on' ("Shine On") and told that we’re listening to 'the sound of my breaking heart' ("I Really Want You") frankly doesn’t hold much water next to such inadvertently hilarious clunkers as 'Why don’t you give me your love? I’ve taken a ship-load of drugs' ("Give Me Some Love"). Yeah, right…
The fact is that Blunt rode in on the first wave of a resurgence of olde worlde songcraft and sensitivity that now bursts at the seams with more promising talent. Why go for Blunt’s dehydrated instant fix of heartache when you can luxuriate in the deeply moving work of a Jose Gonzalez or Ray LaMontagne? That’s like preferring Babycham to champagne. Don’t say you weren’t warned ...
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