Review: Moon Landing – James Blunt
Quick facts… Born James Hillier Blount, he changed his stage name to James Blunt and took the world by storm in 2005 with his debut studio album, “Back to Bedlam,” that spawned the massive hit “You’re Beautiful.” The album went on to become the biggest selling album of the 2000s in the United Kingdom. “Moon Landing” is Blunt’s fourth studio album and shakes off most of the Suicide Hotline tendencies of some of his earlier work. In fact, the artist “Passenger” with “Let Her Go” makes Blunt sound like a motivational speaker.
Best tracks… “The Only One,” “Bonfire Heart” which he co-wrote with Ryan Tedder from OneRepublic and Blunt’s own favouriteoff the album, “Blue on Blue,” a song about two soldiers in the same army that accidentally shoot each other by mistake. Because, according to Blunt, we “sometimes we hurt the ones that we love the most."
What others have to say… Moon Landing is a solid affair, though by no means describable as an innovative ‘tour de force’. Lead single “Bonfire Heart” is the main attraction for sure, with its folk-pop driven sound. Enthused, Blunt delivers memorable lyrical moments including “Your mouth is a revolver / firing bullets into the sky” and the less profoundly poetic “...I’ve been looking at you /for a long, long time / just trying to break through / trying to make you mine…” www.popmatters.com
What we have to say… When we heard Blunt was releasing a new CD, we tried putting off listening to it at first. The timing had to be right you see. So we kept ourselves busy. Mowing the lawn. Changing plugs. Cleaning up Facebook. You could argue the CD inspired us to do a lot of things before we even listened to it. Now that we have, we’re inspired to tell you it’s actually pretty darn good. Yes, there are traces of schmaltz, but there are also evidence of an artist who’s not trying to be something he isn’t, delivering honest and sincere emo-pop.
It makes us wanna… “…forget “You’re Beautiful.”
In his own words… In an interview with digitaljournal.com, this is what he had to say about the new CD: "I started to write the songs with an audience in mind," he said. "I recorded it in an honest way. I went back and found Tom Rothrock and we recorded it the same way we did with 'Back to Bedlam,' without a major record label in mind and without an audience in mind. I did not hide behind any massive productions. Instead, it was him and me recording in the simplest way we possibly could. That defined real honesty. The album is about my experiences in the last three years. It's very personal, so some of those have been bad. I suppose that I write about real human experience."
Score… Turn the volume up to 7.