Blackfield - Blackfield V

I feel like with the largely forgettable nature of this album, I shift a little bit of the blame for the late discussion to the artists. After the struggle of the project to connect on Welcome to My DNA and Blackfield IV with most of the work on Aviv Geffen’s shoulders, this new album was apparently meant to be a return to the more and collaborative approach to the workload that yielded the excellent chemistry between Aviv and Steven Wilson that made the debut project sizzle. Looking at the composition credits, however, this does not seem to be the case; despite the increased presence of his vocals on Blackfield V, Steven only has co-writing credits on “A Drop in the Ocean” and “Life Is an Ocean” and his only other compositional contribution is the closing track, which I found kind of annoying actually. With Steven’s announcement of a follow-up to Hand. Cannot. Erase. (which I really liked) coming later this year, it seems to me he wanted to put more eggs in that basket and possibly explains his continued absence from Blackfield for the most part. There’s not exactly much else besides the missing collaboration between Steven and Aviv across the album that makes it just kind of a boring mish mash of uninspired alternative rock and mandatory dashes of prog. Lyrically it’s not exactly anemic, but it has a hard time doing more than making a few semi-contemplative statements, which neither the vocal deliveries nor the instrumentals do much to compliment. I’d say “The Jackal” does a decent job of breaking the monotony on the album, but “Salt Water” is just such a needless transition to “Undercover Heart”, which does at least redeem the bad segue with the most emotive chorus on the album, however feeble the song’s structure is. I really wish Steven would commit more of his effort to Blackfield when the occasion arises, even if it resulted in lesser output, rather than leaving Aviv to try to carry the whole project. I’d cash in the past three albums though for one record with both artists focused on meticulously sculpting each piece of it for however long it needed to take. Considering how long it’s been since Steven’s really been immersed in Blackfield, I don’t think I’ll be holding my breath for it.