Jamie xx’s long-awaited second album In Waves forgoes the variety of its predecessor to go all-in on being a great dance album.
It’s been nine long years since the xx’s producer/beatmaker/unsung hero Jamie xx released his solo debut, In Colour. The band’s two singers – Oliver Sim and Romy Madley Croft – have both released solo albums within the past couple years, but neither were as groundbreaking as In Colour, which the Indiecator named the best album of 2015. It blended deep house, melancholic melodies, ambient interludes, a hip-hop track, and multiple appearances by his bandmates to make one stellar album.
Jamie xx’s long-awaited second album In Waves forgoes the variety of its predecessor to go all-in on being a great dance album. Sure, it’s not all that “deep or “reflective,” but damn is it fun.
Much like the Avalanches, Jungle, or pre-deep end Kanye, the best moments of In Waves make use of old soul and R&B samples from the 70s. “Treat Each Other Right” is a standout track that combines two snippets from the obscure “Oh My Love” by Almeta Lattimore, and is full of unexpected twists and turns. Just as Jamie gets things going with a house beat and synthesized bass notes, Jamie briefly cuts the beat and switches the sample before reintroducing the opening with glitch effects. This happens again for a deftly-executed false stop, and it ends up sounding like 3-4 songs in one.
Elsewhere, the “The Feeling I Get From You” borrows heavily from a 1970 deep cut called “Moonlight” by funk group Apple & the Three Oranges. The way Jamie takes so many vocal snippets from this song and re-interprets them over a piano and dance beat is really impressive here. “Dafodil” utilizes two different 1970s samples of the song “I Just Make Believe (I’m Touching You),” with one version sung by R&B singer J.J. Barnes and the other by bossa nova singer Astrud Gilberto. While the track brings in a bevy of contemporary singers (including Panda Bear, who’s only there for 15 seconds), the sample is the real star of the show.
On the flipside, there’s some tracks where the guest vocalists are what make the track distinctive. In Colour featured Jamie’s bandmates from the xx on three tracks, two of which (“SeeSaw” and “Stranger in a Room”) had the xx’s trademark somber feel and minimalism. In contrast, on In Waves, “Waited All Night,” is the only track with the xx’s singers, and it definitely wouldn’t fit on any xx album. With a quick-tempo house beat and cut-up vocal loops, the only other place it would fit is Romy’s solo album Mid-Air. Outside of the xx, the Swedish pop singer Robyn plays a major role in making “Life” into a good pop song. As she goes between a “Vogue”-ish deadpan and melodic singing, a horn sample from the French disco group Revelacion provides the song’s foundation.
In other instances, the collaborations on In Waves don’t involve any guest vocals. “Baddy on the Floor” gets a hand from fellow DJ Honey Dijon, and is easily one of the best tracks on the album. It combines a “move your body” sample from the 80s rapper Divine Styler with a piano chord rhythm from soul singer Keni Burke’s “Let Somebody Love You,” and then whips out the horns from this latter sample for a climatic, Daft Punk-esque bridge. “All You Children” is a collaboration with the aforementioned Avalanches that mixes a recitation by poet Nikki Giovanni with a sample of children singing. Just as Jamie xx’s work on the Avalanches’ single “Wherever You Go” made it into a highlight on their album We Will Always Love You, it should come as no surprise this is a standout track here.
If there’s one thing In Waves is missing, it’s the constant mood shifts of In Colour. While that album had overt party tracks like “Gosh,” “I Know There’s Gonna Be (Good Times),” and “Girl,” it often reined in the carefree vibes for gloomier and more contemplative moments. There’s nothing on In Waves that’s quite as striking as the sad steel drums of “Obvs,” for example. The only time the constant dance beat gets a breather on In Waves is a song quite aptly called “Breather.” While most of the track has an enjoyable, pulsating rhythm, this pauses for two minutes in the middle for a vocal clip from a guided meditation. The sample comes off as overly quirky, and the track might have been better left as an instrumental. Similarly, the closing track “Falling Together” has an excellent beat and melody, but Oona Doherty’s spoken word monologue a’ la Carl Sagan’s “pale blue dot” remark is a little too distracting.
This point underscores that the real draw to Jamie’s albums has always been his production abilities, with his solo instrumental tracks reigning among his best. He also doesn’t need a ton of bells and whistles to make a good banger, as the relatively simple “Still Summer” shows. If you’re looking for something more than a great dance music album, you may want to look elsewhere, but if you’re looking to scratch that high-energy dance itch, then you’ll definitely want to listen to In Waves.
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