In Waves - Jamie xx: Review

Review by Lavender:

Jamie xx is a writer, producer, and electronic musician who first rose to fame as a member of indie pop outfit The xx. In 2015, he released his first solo album In Colour, which was a massive critical darling for its blend of dance and electronic styles and impressive roster of collaborators. It's been 9 years then and yet it feels like In Waves picks up right where the previous album left off. After a series of strong singles, Jamie xx has delivered another slice of absolutely excellent electronica that reinforces itself and features one highlight after another. 

A surprising half of this album's tracklist dropped as singles in advance of it's release and there really isn't a miss in the bunch. A track like Treat Each Other Right may not have exactly blown me away at first but its impact on the record is enormous. It comes after the instrumental intro track Wanna which sets up the punchy beat underneath perfectly. The other single that didn't seem to blow people away at first was Life. Much has been said about Robyn's performance on some features recently and while her turn on the cutthroat verses is a big goofy, she really settles into her own singing the song's shimmering chorus. It helps that Jamie delivers a vibrant backing array of horns wrapped around a tight groove that feels straight out of Daphni's Sizzling. 

There are some other deep cuts that may not blow me away at first, but I similarly grew to appreciate them a lot more. Still Summer is a much more straightforward house effort but one that brings back those grinding, dragging supersaw keys. It's a fun way to paint a song that is objectively bright but jagged in its execution and I like what results. The Feeling I Get From You is the record's most lowkey song but it still finds subtle ways to build on itself and maintain momentum. I love the flush of fluttering keys rush in on the second half around the methodical repetition of the song's core sample. The other ambient voices hanging in the mix reminds me of some of the experiments in casual space on Matmos' The Consuming Flame.

The opening half of the record features even more great tracks I loved as singles. Baddy On The Floor hit right away as a summer jam that I found irresistible right out of the gate and hasn't left my rotation since. Meanwhile, Dafodil was a more recent fascination with a combination of sampled and original vocals slipping in and out of each other and overlapping. It creates this mesmerizing effect with the blissed-out keys bouncing through the song making for an amazing moment. 

Finally, there was Waited All Night a reunion with Romy and Oliver of The xx. While it isn't exactly aligned with where the band left off on their last album, they continue to show off exactly why the balance between them is so compelling. Oliver in particular sounds excellent over this brooding, pulsating instrumental. It's a much murkier song than I was expecting but I really enjoy the results. 

While the first half of the record is good, it ends on a stunningly excellent final run. That begins with Breather a bulky 6-minute, two-part track that's one of the most intense songs on the record in terms of pacing. It trades out the vibrant house sounds for more of a pummeling and relentless metallic beat in the first half. The transition between the two halves sees the beat dropping far into the background as a guided meditation passage takes its place. And wow does that transition perfectly into the second half of the song. I wasn't ready for how slick of a switch-up it would deliver and how utterly irresistible the second half is. 

That leads into my favorite of all the singles, All You Children. It's the album's absolute masterpiece both in crafting a masterful instrumental but also weaving so many catchy vocal samples around it while slipping them together in a way that feels astonishingly cohesive. It's such a great contrast of a beat that feels methodical and direct with moments of life being breathed into its brightest passages. It's a genuinely incredible song I haven't been able to get enough of. Then the entire album concludes with Falling Together another song that floored me. The track is built around these spoken word sections performed in a thick confident Irish accent. And the performance is so playful as she cuts herself off, changes her mind, and casually reinforces and repeats things throughout. But what's built around the vocals is what really makes it click. Jamie is really in his bag all over this song with his propulsive bouncy beats and the frigid synths that emerge around it in the second half. It's such a grand conclusion to this epic run at the end of the record. 

In Waves is a fantastic second addition to Jamie xx's solo discography nearly a decade later. Much like its predecessor impressed by consistently executing on a variety of styles and managing to make them sound cohesive together, In Waves does the same delivering highlights of house and dance music at both its most reserved and its most jubilant. Alongside a roster of excellent contributors, Jamie xx works as a conductor as well as a producer, orchestrating a remarkably cohesive album whose tracklist strengths its already great individual highlights. The album had massive shoes to fill, but with every single re-listen, I start to feel more and more confident that it may be every bit as good as its predecessor. 8.5/10

For more electronica check out my review of Porter Robinson's Smile