James Blunt: All The Lost Souls : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

James Blunt's 2004 debut, Back to Bedlam, charmed American audiences like a bad Hugh Grant movie, only moonier -- soft, unfailingly polite, very sappy. On All the Lost Souls, Blunt again delves into pretty folk pop, though he comes up with a couple of solid cuts in the Bowie-minus-the-weird “One of the Brightest Stars” and “Give Me Some Love,” which is Elton-esque piano pop with a hilarious chorus that begins, “Why don't you give me some love?/I've taken a shipload of drugs.” Problem is, the same sap that fueled “You're Beautiful,” the silly little megahit Blunt may never live down, returns on songs like “Carry You Home.” What's more, too much of All the Lost Souls is just pleasant ether, with Blunt showing a gift for drabness on forgettable ballads that make Coldplay seem like the Arctic Monkeys. Blunt can write a solid pop song now and then. But on All the Lost Souls, the impulse to woo you with that androgynous voice and Byronic sensitivity overwhelms his better instincts.