Skip to main content

Jessie Ware – That! Feels Good! (2023)

Jessie Ware – That! Feels Good!

2020’s What’s Your Pleasure? was a transformative album for Jessie Ware. It was marked by a spectacular burst in confidence, evidenced by the album’s seven singles, but somewhat miraculously, it actually warranted that kind of fanfare. As a dance album, few recent albums this side of Beyoncé’s Renaissance have been able to toe the line between disco homage and genuine innovation. The trick of course is that both albums are really more than disco albums, they function as a dilution of dance music as a whole, grouping in funk, Hi-NRG, and new wave into a glossy, and distinctly 21st-century invention. That! Feels Good! nimbly catapults Ware from being beholden to What’s Your Pleasure? to cementing herself as one of the most agile and important dance artists working today.

That! Feels Good! had a lot of work to do. Its predecessor, although stylistically unique, had a prevailing disco trend and while effective, could have pigeonholed Ware if she hadn’t deviated enough on her next outing. She had also crafted one of the most consistent dance albums in recent memory, a genre not known for its consistency, and it was reasonable to question if she could do it again. Just how Ware would approach a follow-up, whether it be a rehash, or a reinvention, whether it would be lopsided and single-heavy, made it one of the most anticipated albums of 2023. The result is a punchier and more immediate album than What’s Your Pleasure?, slicker and far funkier, but equally iconoclastic.

The self-titled opener is as breathy and sex fixated as its title would imply, but with a limber, galloping bass line and creeping horns and strings that give the whole composition a relentless energy and make for an apt tone setter. Immediately following is lead single “Free Yourself,” a modern classic and probably the most singular single Ware’s ever released. As a song, it’s hard to think of a more nuanced combination of immediacy and timelessness, and despite all its bombast, it never eclipses the rest of the album – or even the track succeeding it. “Pearls” is the plainest imitation here, with its soaring vocals and non-lexical refrain, it’s obviously indebted to Chaka Khan. Her influence pops up throughout the album in fact, but it never distracts, only serving as what seems to be a necessary touchstone for the modern funk chanteuse.

Even the most idiosyncratic song on the record “Shake The Bottle” works despite what could easily be some major shortcomings. Ware’s wonky new wave verse delivery is probably the only way to make the silliness of the lyrics palatable, but with its inescapable chorus and swinging groove, she also manages to twist her horniness into a light and bouncy pop number, devoid of lust but just as fun all the same. Paired with the more straightforward sultriness of the R&B ballad “Lightning” the combo works. In fact, that’s Ware’s real trick here, exuding her sex appeal through every possible method, encompassing all those emotions into a single album, and then pairing each mood to the necessary genre exercise. It’s thematic, but also simplistic and obvious in its effectiveness. Ware’s tulips/two lips pun on the final track could easily ring hollow, but by that point That! Feels Good! has earned Ware’s earnest devotion to the heat of dance music in whatever way strikes her. 

~9.5

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Concert Review: Wilco at The Riviera Theatre, – 3/26/23

Wilco at The Riviera Theatre, – 3/26/23 Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood was once the center of the city’s booming entertainment district. Located at what had initially been the end of the L Train system, The Aragon Ballroom, Green Mill Jazz Club, and long-defunct Uptown Theatre quickly defined the corners of Broadway and Lawrence Avenue as the designated area for Chicagoans to congregate for the arts. As the area’s zeitgeist waivered though, the theatres grew into a weekend oasis of vibrancy amongst an otherwise casual and sleepy north-side neighborhood. Given Wilco’s consistent championing of Chicago’s local institutions, and another Uptown landmark Carol’s Pub in particular, The Rivera Theater seems like exactly the kind of venue for the band to host their latest three-night run and the start of their spring tour. Jeff Tweedy and company know the former movie palace well, playing there many times over the years and even using it as the base for a five-night series of performances b
Post a Comment
Read more

Buck Meek – Haunted Mountain (2023)

Buck Meek – Haunted Mountain   Big Thief, one of the best and most adept bands of the 21 st century, has done more in six short years than most bands can squeeze out of an entire catalog. Each of their five studio albums has managed to expand their signature homespun charm into exciting, self-contained albums. The sound always moves forward but with distinct detours projecting their country-folk and singer-songwriter tendencies over disparate palates. The band’s prolificity extends to their solo catalog as well, the most notable inclusions naturally coming from lead singer and principal songwriter Adrianne Lenker. But behind her eclipsing generational talent, is guitarist Buck Meek, an artist who could easily shepherd his own headlining band if he needed to. Aside from some early, Big Thief-adjacent work, Meek’s true breakout was with 2021’s Two Saviors , a beautiful, alt-country collection of songs, most of which approached the quality, if not the scale of his mother band’s rel
Post a Comment
Read more

Fever Ray - Radical Romantics (2023)

Fever Ray – Radical Romantics Karin Dreijer’s debut solo album Fever Ray came out only shortly after Silent Shout , an album that was almost immediately hailed as The Knife’s masterpiece. The inevitable comparisons seeped out, no one was completely ready to accept the more cavernous Fever Ray as any sort of a replacement for the lush maximalism of Dreijer and her brother’s The Knife. Regardless, Dreijer had proved how essential they were to that project and by 2014, the two had disbanded. Fever Ray’s next album Plunge continued Dreijer’s push towards empty space with an angrier and more overtly political edge and simultaneously built Fever Ray into a proper entity in its own right. Radical Romantics is a Fever Ray album in that its fixations swarm around Dreijer, all their proclivities, and all their vulnerabilities. It’s also the closest Fever Ray has ever sounded like The Knife, whether it be the soaring and anthemic “Shiver”, or the pronounced synths ripples on “New Utensi
Post a Comment
Read more