Jack Garratt has only just released his debut album, but his success has been sewn up for months. Last October, the 24-year-old British songwriter/producer announced a show at London's 5000-capacity Brixton Academy for this coming April. In November, he won the Brits Critics' Choice Award for 2016; last month, the BBC Sound of 2016 poll. From the other side of the Atlantic, those might look like insignificant spoils, but in the UK, it's a case of mutually assured industry triumph: Garratt dominates radio, plays sweet televised spots at major festivals, boosts live revenues, and makes the organizations that backed him look smart. Such are the perks of signing to Island, an imprint of Universal, who have had Garratt in a development deal for years—and scooped 11 of the past 14 BBC Sound of... polls thanks to their massive spending power.
Brits are cynical of being marketed to, and even more suspicious of what looks like instant success, so Island have carefully made Garratt look Very Authentic. There's a lovelorn songwriter at the heart of his music—a side he displayed when he covered Disclosure's "Latch" in earnest bluesman fashion—that's been coated with lightly fizzing electronica. Phase seems forged from the sounds of James Blake's CMYK EP and Jai Paul's "BTSTU": subaquatic synth motifs and juddering basslines that burst into scrunching supernova choruses. There's also lots of gospel-influenced warbling and soft, bluesy piano. Whenever Garratt plays the latter, you hear his stool squeak very clearly, as if it's been amplified for effect.
Marketing aside, Phase doesn't sound unpleasant, just generic. Phase starts strong enough: The delicate, swimmy first verse of opener "Coalesce (Synesthesia Pt. II)" suddenly goes hyperdrive, gathering nastier textures as Garratt's vocals fracture and writhe. "Breathe Life" is the catchiest song, with a bright, shimmying soulful chorus that owes as much to the aforementioned Jai Paul as it does Florence and the Machine's cover of "You Got the Love." "Far Cry" is also compelling, with screaming mosquito synths and agile bass driving the hectic pace.
Things get weaker from there: "Weathered" has the unctuous sentimentality of Mumford & Sons (whom Garratt has supported in stadiums), and its lyrics are the equivalent of those manipulative commercials showing a child turn into a senior citizen in 45 seconds: "When I grow old/ The sun will cope/ Shine down on every youth stain," Garratt simpers. He has a tendency to reach for grandiose overstatements as shorthand for profundity, a tendency that gives his romantic lyrics an unwittingly sinister edge. His neediness is intense: "To love you takes every waking thought I have," he declares on "Fire." On "The Love You're Given," he sings, "I promise if you're gonna lock me out I will stay as your ghost/ But if you take the love you're given I will leave you alone," and echoes the sentiment on "I Know All What I Do": "If I ever leave you, eyes will remain."
To give him credit, he seems to recognize a certain OTT tendency within himself. On the hard-grinding "Chemical," he makes various unflattering admissions about his love: how it's "overdone, selfish, and domineering … chemical, shallow, and chauvinistic." But as with almost all his lyrics on the topic, it feels empty, drawing from overcooked cultural tropes about urgency. Somewhere within all this bombast is a sensitive man who's trying to explore his flaws and desires candidly. You sense that the thing that he needs is intimacy, a smaller scale. And it's the one luxury he's not going to get, because Jack Garratt is too big to fail.
