Flamingo Road, Blake’s latest album, is a journey through intimacy and the human experience; a blend of personal experience and whimsical touches, it puts you in the zone of late-afternoon laziness, where you just let the music wash over you. Pulling from his own life, Blake creates a space in which you can just be, as he traverses a landscape spanning everything from the context of losing a dear friend to a moment of looking outward and bringing attention to everything wrong with the system.
Energetic, bouncy, and lively: this is how Flamingo Road’s first track, I Want You, leaps into your ears from its very first moments. With a relentless swing energy, it’s timeless music that transcends boundaries – whether temporal, genre, or influence. Asking For A Friend continues the chill, acoustic energy that I Want You set up so effortlessly; the clever wordplay of the title carries through the song, giving it a certain heaviness even amidst the (at first glance) easygoing sound Blake gives it.
Then comes the titular track, Flamingo Road. It’s drenched in the kind of whimsy that struts down the line between classic and fantastical. It rolls by you, almost daring you to groove along, sounding simultaneously like a song you’ve known forever, and a song you’re just discovering for the first time. It moves into Sleep Talk, an upbeat, warm track that envelopes you in its intimacy, while My Happiness explores a darker sound: one of memory and melancholy. Even If You Don’t brings the album back up into lighter tones, and Truth and Lies does a full 180° turn, with Blake’s voice cutting through snarling guitars – proof that any sound is in his wheelhouse, if he so chooses.
Say Yes is filled with the same bittersweetness that accompanies nostalgia; an acoustic track that bares Blake’s soul to its very core, its confessional nature seems almost effortless for how easily the words flow with the melody. On the other hand, Scapegoating is a sharp critique of civil and political society, and how systems break you down, piece by piece. You’re Not Broken is graceful in its poignancy, probing into the territory of trauma with a calmness that never borders on indifference. The album rounds out with Stars, ending Flamingo Road with positivity, delivering an album that’s hopeful, despite it all, till the end.