Keeping track of James Blake’s music over the years has been a bit like watching a moody, defensive teenager gradually come out of his shell. Early releases such as ‘Unluck’ and ‘Klavierwerke’ were so abstract that they practically seemed to grunt and spit at me whenever I tried to get past their surly, impersonal exteriors. It was only on the stripped back piano cover ‘A Case Of You’ and releases like ‘Overgrown’ that Blake shed the post-dubstep pretence and started making music with real personality. With this change came serious critical and commercial success and, if there’s any lesson to be learnt from this gradual shift from fuckboy to choirboy, it’s that it’s okay to be vulnerable. The Colour In Anything brings this out more fully than ever before, as Blake breaks out of his angsty cocoon to produce some of his most disarming and open music yet.

A lot of these musical changes can be traced through the man himself. In a recent interview with Pitchfork, he notes how he has finally “caught up” with his age: “I feel now as if I can identify with more empathy and relate to people”. This, along with a year which he spent trying to improve his mental state, heavily informed the album’s creation.

The result is that a clearer and friendlier mindset seeps through the work on practically every level. Blake’s lyrics are at their most soppily intimate (‘I noticed how wonderful you are’), there are more heart-rending piano ballads than ever before (most notably, ‘Love Me In Whatever Way’ and the album’s title track), and his voice is used to absolutely devastating effect: every timbre of his shaky crooning on ‘f.o.r.e.v.e.r.’ seems pinpointed to extract as many tears from its listener as possible.

We also see songs with genuine positivity in them. ‘Always’ blurs together classical, R&B and gospel influences to bring to mind the quiet, leafy optimism of a summer’s afternoon. Then, on ‘Two Men Down’, a sequence of rickety wheel creaks, synth-loops and dog barks unfolds into a sugary chorus of unreflective bliss. The lyrics “Oh what I day I chose for you / To tell you that I loved you” might sound sickeningly twee in print but, when sung this unselfconsciously I couldn’t help but crack a smile. Such unashamed cheese is poles apart from the tortured introspection of his previous releases and all the better for it. For once, you get the sense that Blake is revealing more than just the fashionably brooding elements of his personality through his music.

The album’s easygoing nature is also reflected in the sheer number of people drafted in for its creation. It features guest-spots from Justin Vernon and Conan Mockasin along with songwriting and production contributions from Frank Ocean and Rick Rubin. His inclusiveness reached such lengths that Kanye West was even supposed to rap over the album’s fourth song, ‘Timeless’. Regardless of how out-of-place a swaggy Yeezy verse would have been on the record, the work as a whole has undeniably benefitted from filtering so many voices.

Clocking in at around 75 minutes and featuring no less than 17 songs, its general feel is meandering and free. It wanders in and out of a range of moods and styles that drift seamlessly into each other, from the post-breakup agony of ‘Radio Silence’ to the ganja-infused laziness of ‘Put That Away and Talk To Me’ to the peaceful reflection of ‘Meet You in the Maze’. By drawing in so many contributions and so much of Blake himself, it almost feels unfinished in a way which is refreshingly natural and unstudied.

In general, I think, the album goes to show to what opening yourself up can achieve musically. Blake may still enjoy wearing oversized trench-coats, sport an enigmatic sweep of hair and have an obsession with taking grayscale photos of himself in unnecessarily dark rooms (see google images). However, beneath the posy facade is a man who is comfortable with expressing ideas that are fundamentally heartfelt and unhip which, bizarrely, has made him one of the coolest and most praiseworthy artists around.