If your exposure to Jamie xx was largely via the band who gave him his pseudonym, his debut solo album might have come as a shock. You doubtless knew he had a parallel career as a DJ and dance producer, but even so, the mood of 2015’s In Colour was at odds with that reliably conjured by the xx.
Where the band of childhood friends almost always sound understated, introspective and dimly-lit – music that, metaphorically speaking, has the curtains closed – In Colour felt like someone throwing open the windows, or winding them down in a car with a powerful sound system: a celebration of London’s dance history that took in breakbeats and Belfast by Orbital, two-step garage rhythms and jungle MCs. It wasn’t without its moments of melancholy – it frequently seemed to be celebrating a past its author was too young to have experienced first-hand – but its overall mood was as vibrant as the colour wheel on its cover.
Nine years later, its follow-up arrives in an identical sleeve design but with the colours replaced by a striking monochrome op-art pattern: it looks not unlike the cover of The Faust Tapes, and seems to suggest starker, more experimental contents. But incredibly, given there’s nearly a decade between them, In Waves picks up more or less where In Colour left off: the opening Wanna deploys two immediately recognisable vintage UK garage samples – from Double 99’s Ripgroove and Tina Moore’s Never Gonna Let You Go – over stately piano chords and a rhythm track that never quite bursts into life as you expect it to.
But In Waves doesn’t turn out as you expect it to, either. The mood remains vibrant – it’s an album preoccupied with rapture, whether induced by chemicals or repetitive beats – but while In Colour landed like a millennial equivalent of a blockbuster 90s dance album, designed to be enjoyed at home rather than a club, In Waves feels more interested in the latter. There are certainly tracks that lend themselves to the living room. Treat Each Other Right keeps changing tempo, flipping between a sample of Almeta Lattimore’s vocal – from her on-the-cusp-of-disco single Oh My Love – marooned above a four-four beat, an immense bass line and a chunk of Oh My Love itself that defies being able to dance to. Dafodil is clearly rooted in club culture, but it ropes guest stars Kelsey Lu, Panda Bear and John Glacier into a woozy evocation of the fleeting moment when whatever you’ve taken to enhance the dancefloor experience becomes an end in itself, and the music is just a distant soundtrack to what’s currently happening in your brain.
Yet there are noticeably more tracks on In Waves that are evidently designed to be heard through big speakers at 3am. The title of the Honey Dijon collaboration Baddy on the Floor – a fabulous bit of piano house – speaks for itself. The Feeling I Get from You and Breather are stark and hypnotic celebrations of euphoria, the former repeating the phrase “there’s no other night”, the latter wittily subverting the guided meditation of a wellness guru (“founder of the wellness brand Boho Beautiful”, no less) so it sounds as if she’s talking about a noticeably more accelerated form of transcendence than usual.
Jamie xx seems more invested in those tracks than the more pop-facing tunes. Still Summer’s rewrite of the Moody Blues’ Nights in White Satin is well done, and certainly subtler than it might have been in the hands of a less skilled producer, but it’s perhaps a step too close to a craven big-room pop-house anthem for comfort. Decorated with trumpets and flamenco guitar, Life is perfectly OK – there’s an authentically funny section by guest vocalist Robyn that plays on the both the literal and RuPaul’s Drag Race senses of the phrase “you’re giving me …” – but the end result feels slightly underwhelming, not as striking as a collaboration with an artist as gifted as Robyn should be.
He’s on safer ground with Waited All Night, which reunites him with xx bandmates Romy Madley Croft and Oliver Sim. It neatly flips the script of an old disco trope: instead of celebrating the transience of a clubland hook-up – as on Phreek’s Weekend or Inner Life’s I’m Caught Up (in a One Night Love Affair) – it’s filled with hopeful anticipation that proximity on a dancefloor might lead to a deeper and more lasting relationship. The work of a smart, skilled producer that never seems to betray its lengthy and apparently anguished gestation, In Waves hits the target far more often than it misses, and when it does miss, it’s not by far. It splits the difference between night in and out-out and winds up working in both contexts: a tricky line to walk, but one Jamie xx strolls confidently along.
This week Alexis listened to
Sofie Royer – I Forget (I’m So Young)
A Vienna-based “multidisciplinary artist”, Royer wears her artiness very lightly: I Forget (I’m So Young) is joy-bringing electronic bubblegum, with just a smear of affecting sadness at its core.
