Critical reception
Friends That Break Your Heart was met with generally positive reviews. At Metacritic, which assigns a rating out of 100 to reviews from professional publications, the album received a weighted average score of 79, based on 15 reviews.[9] Aggregator AnyDecentMusic? gave it 7.3 out of 10, based on their assessment of the critical consensus.[8]
Ella Kemp of NME praised the album, stating, "Familiar emotionally yet revelatory in its execution, the album sees Blake sing about mundane, almost incidental upsets that sting harder than they should. Piercing lyrics are matched by innovative, fearless production".[16] Ben Tipple of DIY said, "His shifts in sound are as delicate as his music, continuing to showcase his ability to blur styles with unparalleled precision".[12] Helen Brown from The Independent enjoyed the album, saying, "Few artists can make such heartbreak sound so pretty, while still reflecting on all its weirdness and complexity".[15] The Observer's Kitty Empire wrote, "Many affecting tracks detail the sharknado of outrage and bewilderment in Blake's trademark delicate soprano, offset occasionally by well-chosen collaborators (SZA, or rappers JID and SwaVay) or startlingly pitch-shifted vocals".[17] Nathan Evans of Clash gave a positive review, stating, "The LP's home stretch is up there with Blake's best, not just in the tense penultimate title track and wet-cheeked closer "If I'm Insecure", but on the lead single. "Say What You Will" shows off the magic trick Blake's perfected by now. Vocally, he's unsettlingly beautiful".[11]
Reviewing the album for AllMusic, Fred Thomas stated, "Even though Friends That Break Your Heart travels a winding path from experimental rap tracks to the tender balladry that makes up the majority of its final quarter, it's still one of the more accessible, and occasionally predictable, collections of material from Blake".[10] Peter Boulos of Exclaim! said, "It does occasionally err too heavily towards swaying ballad tropes, but importantly Blake never hides his feelings through allegory or metaphor, nor does he mangle his vocal delivery with electronic trickery".[13] Pitchfork critic Shaad D'Souza said, "Even if the music remains more ambitious than that aspiration, perhaps the most groundbreaking thing about Friends That Break Your Heart is that James Blake has never sounded so safe".[18] Writing for Uncut, John Lewis stated, "Blake's fragmented post-dubstep has always had an air of bleak melancholy, but nothing he's done has been quite as self-consciously miserable as this".[19]
