It’s been almost 10 years since we last heard at length from Jamie xx. 2015’s In Colour took the moody brand of minimalism his band the xx had perfected for a spin on the dancefloor. Since then, he’s scattered a few under-the-radar bits of production work for high-profile artists like Frank Ocean, Miley Cyrus, and Tyler, the Creator, as well as his bandmates’ solo records. In Colour peaked with the Romy feature “Loud Places,” in which she delineates the different reasons people have to go out: to find a lover to go home with, to find a reason to never go home again. And his co-production of Romy’s own “Enjoy Your Life” was a highlight of her 2023 debut, an instant anthem about letting go of the reasons why and embracing pleasure. The writer and nightlife scholar McKenzie Wark opens her classic book Raving with a statement of purpose. “First thing I look for at raves: who needs it.” Tracks like these offered a defense of this need and a depiction of it. They felt, they feel, essential.
The pleasure of the dancefloor also animates his album-length return. In Waves generally plays to his strengths. These include simplicity: “Still Summer” is essentially a filtered trance chord progression, a kickdrum, and some screams; “The Feeling I Get From You” sets a collaged profession of love above some piano bar tinklings and an electro-y beat. Both are class acts. He also has a top-drawer guestlist, both sampled and in-person. His collab with the Avalanches brings the legendary poet Nikki Giovanni to the party via lifted stanzas of her Black Arts Movement “Dance Poem,” and if, like me, you might not necessarily have been the target audience for her 1976 calling-in of revolutionary children, the track’s psychedelic pop groove is welcoming nonetheless. “Baddy on the Floor” brings in the iconic Honey Dijon for a gospel-house stormer, easily the most vital track of the bunch. And “Life” lets Robyn, that disco bard of mixed emotions, rip. “Let’s fuck it up tonight,” she commands over French-touched house, and who would say no? Music sounds better with her.
Even at its strangest—the poesy comedown of closer “Falling Together” or the electroclash freakout of “Dafodil,” in which Kelsey Lu, John Glacier, Panda Bear, and also A$AP Rocky get lost on a hot summer night—Waves is bigger than In Colour, in the spectacle of its sound and in the scope of possible audience. This is music that can be effortlessly slotted into mainstream house sets and diced into TikTok challenges, selected as soundtracks for your vacation Insta carousels and added to “memories of 2024” playlists. Nothing succeeds in dance music like dance music about dancing, and on that front, In Waves is the big time.
And yet the stakes feel small. The breakbeat techno “Breather” soundtracks an attempt to stave off a panic attack, but its limp mindfulness mantras and the “French Kiss”-style slowdown at the center keep the track from feeling bodied. Opener “Wanna” attempts a grand swoon that’s more of a gentle sway, though its little bits of glissando might well give a shiver and its bass is EQ’d for maximum impact. In the expert machinations, there’s a certain slightness.
When feeling out what’s missing, it helps to look at what’s been there the whole time. “Waited All Night” finally gets the band back together, and Romy and Oliver Sim are in fine, melancholy voice. “Don’t want to peak too soon,” Romy sings, as the track layers Sasha & Digweed-style ’90s progressive house, the bassline hedonism of millennium UK garagers like Shanks & Bigfoot, the sonic chemtrails of his contemporaries like Bambounou and Peverelist, and even a brief threat of gabber towards the end. He’s got the plugs to the power sources of the last 60 years of dance music at his fingertips. “Would you want to feel it?” Romy asks. And yes of course—that’s why we’re here, on this dancefloor, together.
That’s what we need, the peak, that moment of awkwardness and risk and the euphoria that feels like an eternity and comes and goes in an instant. In Waves promises these moments. Literally, in the hammered samples throughout 2-step-y “Treat Each Other Right,” which arrives with the bravado of prime Basement Jaxx (or, lately, Overmono or Two Shell) and the nu-PLUR politics of Octo Octa and Eris Drew and then sinks under the weight of its own protestations of eternal love and devotion. Dance music about dancing works when it inspires movement; dance music about love only works when you can’t help but sink in. Remember when the Idris Muhammad sample swells like a first, best kiss, in Romy’s “Loud Places”? You’ll never forget it, unlike a fair bit of In Waves, which is tasteful and slick, approachable and antiperspirant, less oceanic ecstasy than the pool party of the year.
