Album review: Leap, by James Bay, wears its heart on both sleeves
Leap is the new album by James Bay.
★★★☆☆
James Bay did not seem like much of a risk-taker when he broke into the top 10 with debut album Chaos and Calm in 2014. With his wide-brimmed hat and even wider eyes, he looked like a record label-approved updating of the Ed Sheeran school of confessional pop. A summer strummer who would create a splash only to be inevitably eclipsed by the next new thing.
However he defied expectations quite spectacularly in 2018 with his second LP Electric Light. Out went the campfire anthems, replaced by Led Zeppelin guitars and rock swagger. The hat was gone too, in favour of a leather jacket.
It was a dramatic reinvention – raising the question of what he could possibly do to top it. The answer, he reveals on his third long-player, is to go back to troubadour basics. This was not a straightforward journey: early sessions for the records were marked, says Bay, by “fear, anxiety and problems with self-confidence”.
He kept pushing, though and Leap sees him wearing his heart on both sleeves (along with his hat, seemingly retrieved from the skip). Give Me The Reason is a love-lorn opener in which he wallows in a lost afternoon in New York with a significant other (“we laughed so hard, you broke my heart”).
He goes full Sheeran meanwhile on Save Your Love, an open-veined ballad addressed to a former lover to whom he has apparently given the heave-ho (“save your love for someone who’s never going to run”). It is heartfelt but not earth-shattering. And will do little to discourage the idea that Bay is one of those artists who mistakes drippiness for sincerity.
Still, fans who found it hard to get their heads around his veer into classic rock, will be delighted that he’s wound back the clock. “Boy next door” pop was all the rage when Bay came along. Leap argues – a little unconvincingly perhaps – that it’s time it made a comeback.
