Trying Times

Trying Times is James Blake's seventh studio album, released March 13, 2026 on his own Good Boy Records label. It was his first fully independent release, following his departure from Polydor Records in 2024 and the formation of his own production company, CMYK Group. Co-produced with longtime collaborator Dom Maker, the album was recorded after Blake's return to London following roughly a decade living in Los Angeles.

The album circles the idea that love might be the point of everything, even as it grows more fragile under the pressures of a chaotic world. Its 48 minutes explore grief, caregiving, mental health, and the limits of language, arriving at no easy conclusions. Critics praised it as Blake's most honest and focused album lyrically, with the Irish Times describing it as a "quietly mesmerising comedown album with no bottom floor, only endless depths."

Blake announced the album through a password-protected website, requiring listeners to seek it out rather than receive it through conventional promotion. The gesture reflected a broader withdrawal from the algorithmic machinery of modern music distribution, and a deliberate return to the conditions under which he made his earliest work.