Artist:      James Blunt
Album:       All The Lost Souls
Label:       Custard/Atlantic Records
Playtime:    38:35 min
Genre:       Rock
URL:         http://www.myspace.com/jamesblunt
Rip date:    2007-09-12
Street date: 2007-09-18
Size:        50.71 MB
Type:        Normal
Quality:     VBR kbps / 4410kHz / Joint Stereo

James Blunt’s family have served in one kind of army or another since 995A.D.
A long line of warriors. Savages really. Not a musical bone in any one of
their bodies. The only music he heard growing up was “Happy Birthday” and
“Silent Night”. His father considered all music, even classical, to be
unnecessary noise. Although James was not one to rock the family boat, he
didn’t really think he was going to join the army – it sort of crept up on
him. Plus his family didn’t have a boat. Aged fourteen he just held the
teenage conviction that he would have an interesting life – maybe that’s why
he picked the guitar? Then again, maybe if he hadn’t, he would have tripped
over it. He went to University and studied Aerospace Manufacturing
Engineering and Sociology, spending most lectures asleep on the floor at the
back. In much the same way, he ended up in the army. In essence, one day he
was sleeping off a hangover at the back of a sociology lecture hall and the
next thing he knew he was in Kosovo with a gun and a guitar strapped to the
side of a tank, wondering who he could possibly sleep with to get out of this
war. To break up the super attenuated monotony, James would sometimes stroll
through Serb villages wearing an East German cap singing, “All we are saying
is give peace a chance”. “We were peace-keepers at that point,” he explained,
shrugging helplessly.

So how did the music get into him, you might ask? Well if you were sent to
boarding school aged seven, studied Engineering by mistake (“I thought we
were going to fly planes, but we just pulled metals apart – the brochure was
very misleading.”), joined the army by default, guarded The Queen, buried The
Queen Mother and pranced around London like a tit for Japanese tourists to
photograph, what you’re going to want to do very much after that, besides
getting stoned and laid, is put your gun down, pick up a guitar and make an
album in America with Linda Perry. So James came to Los Angeles in September
2003 to record with Tom Rothrock et al. At night he’d go to bars, bringing
with him his valuable British accent (in the U.K., too posh for some people –
in LA, the best thing she’d heard all night) and the fact that like 50 Cent
he’d been shot at numerous times, but unlike the Cent, had dodged the
bullets. One song, “Goodbye My Lover”, was recorded in his landladies’
bathroom (“She was a frequenter of mental hospitals and in general, a freak –
but pleasant”) where, naturally, she kept a piano.

From birth in a military hospital in Tidworth, to Harrow School, to Aerospace
Manufacturing Engineering, to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, to The
Household Cavalry, to Kosovo, to Buckingham Palace, to a recording studio in
Los Angeles. How did James get from there to here? Only James Blunt’s
hairdresser knows for certain, and either he isn’t talking or James cuts his
own hair, and it’s up to you to join the dots – there are ten of them on the
album.

01. 1973                                                              ( 4:40)
02. One Of The Brightest Stars                                        ( 3:11)
03. I'll Take Everything                                              ( 3:05)
04. Same Mistake                                                      ( 4:58)
05. Carry You Home                                                    ( 3:56)
06. Give Me Some Love                                                 ( 3:36)
07. I Really Want You                                                 ( 3:30)
08. Shine On                                                          ( 4:26)
09. Annie                                                             ( 3:28)
10. I Can't Hear The Music                                            ( 3:45)