James Blake covers Joni Mitchell

For all the hype and expectation, James Blake's eponymous album didn't exactly fly off the shelves this year. In fact, it doesn't even figure in the Official Chart Company's Top 20 best-selling debuts of the year, where James was beaten by the likes of X Factor reject Mary Byrne and popular "Last Dance" hitmaker Clare Maguire.

My guess is that the James Blake sound (bleepy bloopy mumble glitch stutter bleep long pause hold-a-piano-chord-for-two minutes vocoder bloop mumble whisper) was never destined to spread beyond a very select audience. Certainly, the album suffered from incredibly bad word-of-mouth reviews from people who'd been beguiled by his angelic, but atypically straightforward, cover of Feist's Limit To Your Love. Conversely, everyone who took a punt on his live show fell deeply, irreversibly in love.

Now, the album has been - bravely - reissued in a deluxe two-disc edition and, presumably in an attempt to lure back some of those disillusioned fans, Blake has recorded another cover. This time it's Joni Mitchell's A Case Of You, one of the finest, weepiest love songs ever written.

He's actually been playing the song live for some time and the studio version seems to date back to last year, as it's sampled on several of his album tracks.

For the song's first official release, Blake has put together a video starring Rebecca Hall, of "looking incredibly hot in Vicky Cristina Barcelona" fame. And here it is...

James Blake - A Case Of You


Here's the original, from 1971's incredible Blue album, for comparison.

Joni Mitchell - A Case Of You

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