"The most gem-like overlooked album this year is neither hairy nor scary; rubber-necking into the great unknown isn't high in its priorities. But it is preternaturally beautiful. "O True Believers" by 24-year-old guitarist James Blackshaw features 10 fingers and 12 strings and, frankly, urinates all over whatever will be the Mercury Prize's token folk nominee next year. Blackshaw is British, but virtually no one has heard of him outside the US folk underground; he deserves ticker-tape parades. His style derives from the Takoma school founded by John Fahey, but that is all detail. Blackshaw's got it all: skills to hyperventilate for, and instinctual loveliness in spades."
- Kitty Empire, The Observer, 31/12/06

"In recent months, 24-year-old UK guitarist James Blackshaw has burst fully-formed onto the folk underground, his remarkable talents already seeming at peak maturity... Blackshaw has established himself as an instrumentalist of astonishing grace and delicacy, seeming as though he's gobbled and digested whole the primitive folk canons of Takoma and Vanguard. Relying primarily on 12-string guitar, Blackshaw's intricate creations web together Robbie Basho's wayfaring mysticism, Ben Chasny's soft-focused acid tongues, and the rustic fantasias of Sandy Bull... Blackshaw is able to differentiate himself through his exotic lyricism, stray pan-ethnic flourishes and pure unmasked virtuosity."
- Pitchforkmedia.com

"There's an indecent ease to James Blackshaw's guitar playing. His fingerpicking mantras are as melodic as a music box, gliding through dizzying tempos like clockwork. His raga-like instrumentals are not structured as much as woven, teasing out a single melodic strand to explore all it's textural possibilities. Such is the silky control he exherts over his instrument, Blackshaw often sounds more like a court harpist than a backwoods strummer."
- Derek Walmsey, The Wire