Written by Daniel Peraza
Jamie XX has worked in almost all musical circles he could get himself into. Writing credits in songs like: Girl on Fire by Alicia Keys or Talk that Talk by Rihanna. Anybody who listened to indie music in the 2012-2014 era will instantly recognize the double letter at the end of his name. As part of the popular The XX, Jamie started to create his own sound and image. With his debut solo album, In Colour, he was placed into his own realm and being able to work with his xx friends: Oliver Sim and Romy Croft.
But this isn’t that review. This is the In Waves review.
This review is meant for the music lover, the person who wants something different than what they listen to every day, someone who needs a new album to love.
The album opens with “Wanna” that leads into “Treat Each Other Right” as like a one-two punch for the listener. A fading synth that starts like when you are opening your eyes in the morning that goes into an easy message when you want to step out into the world: “Treat each other right.” Containing a sample from the 1975 Almeta Lattimore song of “Oh my Love”, it sets a standard for the how samples should be used in electronic songs that doesn’t just pitch up a sample and adds a dance beat in the background. The song combines the sample but in certain sections just lets the 4:01 runtime have its own life. He lets the song and for that case, the album, Breathe. I’ll come back to this.
A note for the rest of the album: this is a gapless album. So those hard transitions into the next song, they don’t exist here.
The next two tracks reunite The XX for “Waited all Night” that keeps the high energy going, I’ll leave it at that. Because of the track with Honey Dijon that gets featured in the next 3:43 minutes of the album. Honey Dijon burst on to my radar with “Love is a State of Mind” of her Black Girl Magic album, another recommendation. A certain feeling exists with this song: something along the lines of euphoria. A rise from the usual tremolo vocal typically used and like a nice coffee blends disco and modern house into forces you to dance.
I will you let you come to your own conclusion with “Daffodil” and “Still Summer”. I can’t guide what you might feel toward those songs.
The next big feature the album gets is from Robyn on “Life.” The Swedish singer gets on the track with the background using the sample of French disco group Revelacion’s “The House of the Rising Sun” from 1977. I will say, straight away, this song fits perfectly in a dance club as the night is getting started to get the party going. Robyn’s catalog continues to build and my way of saying to check it out. Now. I want to get to “Breather” to show what I meant that this album Breathes, there is a form of undulation with the basslines and kicks that most albums don’t have. Starting with a higher tempo than most people would like, the track itself almost as a computer coming to life, finding a way to come down from the higher tempo. This “Breather” allows the album to do something before the final 2 tracks set in and that being to create an ambience of finale; most albums nowadays always seem to want to end too soon. This allows the listeners to feel things start to slow down.
The Avalanches get a major feature as well on this, but that track has been speaking for itself well before this review.
The final track I want to talk about is the final track. “Falling Together” has become one of the songs that I listen to get out of any “down” state of mind. Speaking from repeating this song 40 times in one day, I can never find if the vocals, the bass, kick, hi-hats, or the space between rhythms is what creates the wonder of what this piece of music is. A simple message that we are all connected, and we are all small specks of cosmic dust floating together on this rock temporarily in search of a feeling of togetherness. Ok, now follow me on this idea. Oona Doherty’s voice works as more of a guide as the song opens. You are in an empty plane – dancing – as a glowing silhouette of a festival crowd slowly appears around you. Her voice keeps reverberating around the dark plane. The synth kicks as you are now dancing with a partner, be it whoever you want it to be. There are no solid bodies, just glowing outlines of you, the partner, the crowd, and eventually the stars that are starting to come out. You stop dancing for a second to see the crowd dancing as well, just enjoying the song with you, a feeling that you are all in this together for at least the next five minutes. Oona now gets to the hallway point and just says “And dance… And dance.” And you do. The last words before Oona, the guide, for this space in time for this song says is “But to treat / And be treated with kindness / To preserve one-another, and to cherish / And to cherish the pale, blue, dot.” As the song begins to fade out, as does the crowd and partner, and so do you. The album has stopped playing. But you can always restart it. It’s yours now.
Thank you for following me to the end of this review. This album has been one of the best electronic albums to come out in the last five years. Rating: 9.5 / 10.