James Blackshaw Unraveling In Your Hands
James Blackshaw's Unraveling In Your Hands opens as a quiet, meditative return from a nine-year hiatus, and critics largely agree it marks a triumphant reentry. Across three professional reviews the record earned an 83.33/100 consensus score, with reviewers pointing to the album's sustained compositions and intimate minimalist guitar work as its defining strengths. The sprawling, 27-minute title-piece “Unraveling In Your Hands” emerges as the record's centrepiece, praised for its single-take reverence and hypnotic repetition, while “Dexter” provides the album's most elegiac, spine-tingling moments. Together with the compact closer “Why Keep Still?” these tracks are repeatedly identified as the best songs on Unraveling In Your Hands and the essential entry points for new listeners.
Professional reviews emphasize themes of recovery, mortality and renewal: critics note how grief and coming to terms are mapped through patient, virtuoso fingerpicking rather than flourishes. Some reviewers highlight the album's intimacy and meditational pace as evidence of Blackshaw's renewed focus, crediting the record with compositional craft rather than immediate gratification. While the consensus is highly favorable, commentary is measured—praise centers on emotional precision and the album's ability to reward sustained listening rather than radio-ready hooks.
For readers searching for an Unraveling In Your Hands review or wondering whether the collection is worth listening to, the critical consensus suggests yes: across three reviews the record stands out for meditative guitar virtuosity, emotional candor and three standout tracks that anchor its narrative, positioning it as a meaningful return in Blackshaw's catalog.
Critics' Top Tracks
The standout songs that made critics take notice
Unraveling In Your Hands
3 mentions
"The eponymous 27-minute opener was recorded in a single unedited take"— Pitchfork
Dexter
3 mentions
"A deep, three-note woodwind motif played by Charlotte Glasson repeats"— Pitchfork
Why Keep Still?
3 mentions
"Blackshaw’s guitar maintains an amiable country amble"— Pitchfork
The eponymous 27-minute opener was recorded in a single unedited take
Track Ratings
How critics rated each track, relative to this album (0-100). Only tracks that made critics feel something are rated.
Unraveling In Your Hands
Dexter
Why Keep Still?
What Critics Are Saying
Deep insights from 3 critics who reviewed this album
Critic's Take
James Blackshaw returns with Unraveling In Your Hands, and the review makes clear the best songs are the sprawling title track and the elegiac “Dexter”. The 27-minute “Unraveling In Your Hands” is described in almost reverent terms, a single unedited take that feels aspirational and meditative, while “Dexter” is a spine-tingling study in degradation and clarity. Together, with the upward-reaching “Why Keep Still?”, they map a journey from grief to something like transcendence, which is why listeners searching for the best tracks on Unraveling In Your Hands should start with those two pieces.
Key Points
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The title track is best for its single-take, virtuosic intimacy and emotional focus.
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The album’s core strengths are emotional weight, meditative composition, and technical assurance after hardship.
Themes
Critic's Take
In a welcome return after nine years, James Blackshaw's Unraveling In Your Hands finds its clearest strengths in extended, elegiac pieces such as “Unraveling In Your Hands” and the tender memorial “Dexter”. Jon Dale writes with calm authority about how the title-piece functions as a centrepiece - a 27-minute bravura that unspools hypnotic repetition and dazzling flecks of light, while “Dexter” supplies the album's most intimate moment of loss. The compact closer “Why Keep Still?” is praised as an empathic, gently moving piece that ties the record together, making these the best tracks on Unraveling In Your Hands by virtue of their emotional precision and compositional craft.
Key Points
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The 27-minute title track is the best song because it functions as a hypnotic, bravura centrepiece with unforgettable repeating themes.
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The album's core strengths are emotional clarity, craft in solo-guitar composition, and poignant exploration of loss and renewal.
Themes
Critic's Take
James Blackshaw returns with an album that rewards close listening: on Unraveling In Your Hands the best songs - particularly “Unraveling In Your Hands” and “Dexter” - unfold slowly, meticulous and quietly triumphant. The reviewer's voice lingers on the patient surges of plucked guitar and seeks out the record's meditative center, describing these tracks as the album's emotional anchors. It reads like praise for craftsmanship, noting that the best tracks are not flashy but insistently beautiful, and that they make this record one of Blackshaw's most affecting returns. The narrative keeps focus on the best tracks on Unraveling In Your Hands, explaining why listeners searching for the best songs on the album should start with those two pieces.
Key Points
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The title track is the album's emotional centerpiece because it unfolds slowly and showcases Blackshaw's meticulous guitar work.
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The album's core strengths are its patient, meditative compositions and the intimacy of its return-from-hiatus perspective.