Released almost a decade after his debut album, Jamie xx’s ‘In Waves’ delivers all the danger, joy and movement one could want from a new album. Bold, feature-heavy, and not afraid to take a broodier route, it certainly shows us what we’ve been missing.

Stream: ‘In Waves’ – Jamie xx

I’m going to start this review with a slightly controversial take, but I just didn’t get the hype surrounding Jamie xx’s 2015 debut album, In Colour.

Sure, it’s (probably) a pretty solid gateway into electronic music, providing more indie-house club sounds than supercharged breakbeats, but it’s just not my cup of tea. In Colour was a favourite to be played through portable speakers at the beach, or breeze in through an open car window, but I have to admit, I just found it a bit boring. When listening to electronic music, I need it to be driven, heavier, and make me want to move. I’m not saying every electronic artist has to make super-intense dancefloor anthems; artists such as Jitwam, Little Dragon, and Aphex Twin have all produced tracks that are on the ‘mellower’ side, but what makes them attractive is their distinct personality, something I just couldn’t find in In Colour.

That being said, when Jamie xx released his single “KILL DEM” in 2022, I was instantly hooked. He sampled the classic dancehall/ragga song ‘Limb By Limb’ by Cutty Ranks, heavily chopped and distorted it, then added looped drums and a thumping breakbeat to produce a sound entirely different to anything on In Colour. As someone who’s just not really into ‘indie-house,’ this intensely unrelentless energy satisfied exactly what I wanted in a dance track, and revealed a grittier personality to Jamie xx then I had previously given him credit for.

Listening to In Waves (released September 20, 2024 via Young) from start to finish for the first time, I was buzzing.

Forget the indie-crossover of his first album; this new one is a broody, volatile, experimental collection reeking of jubilation. The strongest tracks are Jamie xx’s more experimental ones, that felt closer to the sound of Bicep, Overmono, and Joy Orbison, and placated my desire for choppier UK break tracks.

The problem with In Waves is that all the best songs are his singles, and my personal aversion to house-leaning dance music left a lot of the new tracks struggling to compete. A lot of people have ‘single-fatigue’; that feeling that you’d rather hear all or nothing, instead of the artist drawing out the release of a new album for months and months. I know why artists do this; to create suspense, encourage hype, and draw in new fans, but when all the singles released happen to be the strongest of the album, it makes the release date incredibly anti-climactic.

Avoiding hypercriticism, there are some very strong tracks on In Waves other than the singles, such as “Breather” and “Feeling I Get From You.” It’s also no secret that if you’ve been to, or streamed, any of Jamie xx’s DJ sets since the pandemic, embryonic versions of the tracks have already been played, and loved, by fans. What stands out regarding the album as a whole, is that the production of In Waves is super unique, and clearly very well executed. This album is way more feature heavy than In Colour, and that played to Jamie xx’s strengths. The way he uses features like they’re samples, and the fact that he’s collaborating with Plunderphonic giants like The Avalanches, makes this album very distinctive.

Speaking more specifically about the tracks that elevated this album, “Treat Each Other Right” immediately offers a dark, pulsating rhythm that samples Almeta Lattimore’s 1975 soul track, “Oh My Love.” The pure soul sample cutout halfway through the track, and the euphoric vocals behind a driving bass line, certifies this as a stand-out track. “Dafodil” (ft. Kelsey Lu, John Glacier, Panda Bear) is another personal favourite; it’s able to convey a moodier, more complex sound than his previous album, whilst still radiating an undeniably joyous and bright energy. ‘Breather’, whilst admittedly pretty long at over six minutes, offers a pounding, uniquely introspective journey, perfect for late night driving or the end of an afters. And finally, “All You Children” (ft. The Avalanches) is an undeniable banger, sampling the poem “Dance Poem” by Nikki Giovann, and creating a thrilling volatility; the perfect mixture of styles from all the involved artists.

Not meant as a criticism, the soundscape of In Waves feels complicated.

Perhaps this is due to Jamie xx’s more stuttering, synth heavy, experimental tracks standing alongside more conventional dance tracks such as “Wanna” or “Baddy on the Floor.” It makes sense that Jamie xx has taken a different path to In Colour; he claims he couldn’t listen to modern dance music during the pandemic because it was an unwanted reminder of the work he wasn’t doing, so he ended up listening to his parent’s old-school jazz and soul records instead. You can definitely hear that influence in the samples he’s chosen on this album, as well as Jamie xx’s claim that he was listening “to lots of new UK break-y stuff… so I was trying to emulate that.”

In fact, the album was apparently finished a staggering eight times before the artist was satisfied with the result, and so the metamorphosis the original album underwent certainly explains the experimentalism and joyous chaos of certain tracks. To round it all off, the album art for In Waves is a pulsating optical illusion, bringing to mind Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion album cover, and perfectly illustrating the giddy nausea of a sweaty dance floor.

Overall, the songs that are good on In Waves are exceptional, but not every track on the album is ‘good.’

Despite popular opinion, “Baddy on the Floor” is way too generic and predictable for Jamie xx, and sounds a bit muddy, whilst “Still Summer” and “Falling Together” feel like filler tracks that don’t add much to the album’s personality.

Ultimately, it’s a good album with very strong tracks; where Jamie xx has been more experimental, he’s produced and articulated a sound much more exciting than boring house tracks, and I am very psyched to see what music this new style will encourage.

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:: stream/purchase In Waves here ::

:: connect with Jamie xx here ::

“Treat Each Other Right” – Jamie xx

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 © Alasdair McLellan

In Waves

an album by Jamie xx