It’s been a decade since Calvin Harris released his debut album, I Created Disco, establishing himself as the Scottish fish-‘n’-chip-shop version of LCD Soundsystem—just the first of many guises in his highly lucrative career as a dance-party-starter. Highlights have included a Rihanna partnership, a DJ residency at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand, where his visage covered several floors of the hotel, and a prime position atop a wave of all-conquering EDM while simultaneously modeling Armani Y-fronts. He became to the clubbing world what Jason Statham is to Hollywood blockbusters: chameleon enough to turn his hand to the latest franchise (in Harris’ case, drop-laden rave anthems, sexy deep house numbers, etc.), and happy to carry the action from the background. But by the laws of party-pill physics, what goes up must come down. So what happens when the host gets a hunch that the lights are about to come on, leaving the dancefloor empty?
All business, he hedges his bets on his fifth album, making savvily risk-averse decisions. Having proven his mettle as the one-man Brill Building of doof-doof hits, he’s forgone investing wads of energy into radio-ready house smashes. Instead, he provides post-disco mood lighting for a guestlist of pop and R&B singers and rap MCs already stalking the charts on their own merits: Future, Migos, Katy Perry, and Ariana Grande, to name a few. Bearing a ludicrous title whose sketchbook-like connotations are at odds with the music's supreme polish, Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 1 invites them under one roof for a sundown-to-sunrise evening of 1980s-inspired boogie.
At its most successful, the album has already proven itself a sturdy soundtrack to the summer of 2017, via a series of singles in which Harris fully soaks up the laid-back vibes of his adopted home of Los Angeles. The reggae-tinged “Feels” is a tropical jammer ripe for a Malibu barbecue, whereas the piano-gliding “Slide” sets the scene for a breezy sunset drive down the Pacific Coast Highway, and the G-Funk-leaning “Rollin” takes the after-party to the skating rink. At its worst, it amounts to expensively made elevator music—a simpler cousin to Daft Punk’s more efficiently crafted Random Access Memories. The Nicki Minaj-featuring “Skrt on Me,” for example, employs a dancehall rhythm so phoned-in it sounds like QVC background music, while the yacht-rock guitars of “Prayers Up” might leave you wondering whether you’re still on hold to housekeeping.
Similar to that Daft Punk LP, this record represents Harris’ own assertion of “real” musicianship, as the superstar DJ attempts to rebrand himself as an everyman Mark Ronson. Just as Daft Punk emphasized live instrumentation and vintage technology, Harris has been posting videos of himself darting between synths, guitars, and computers in the studio. Since his debut album, Harris has produced, written, and performed all of his tracks himself, but never before has he quite so insistently reminded us of that fact. In the video for “Feels,” he stands lanky behind Pharrell, sporting a newly grown muso beard and slapping his Ibanez 1200. Squint, and he could be Jesse Hughes taking a calypso breather from Eagles of Death Metal.
Still, it’s not as a front-and-center pop star but as the backroom executive where Harris continues to excel. While perfunctory guest vocalists engulfed 18 Months and Motion, this time his A&R skills are more adventurous. Take “Rollin,” for instance. Future’s Auto-Tuned robotics shouldn’t careen so effortlessly into the up-and-coming 19-year-old Khalid’s emotional croon, but somehow they make perfect bedfellows. As further proof that he has his tastemaking ear to the ground, Harris puts breakthrough R&B princess Kehlani’s buttery vocals to great use on the downtempo “Faking It,” balancing Lil Yachty’s teenage rap flow with an air of sophistication. Looking beyond the biggest names, the relatively unknown singer Jessie Reyez, who closes out the record in smoky fashion on the seductive “Hard to Love,” is a welcome find.
Harris wears his newfound sense of relaxation well. Back in February, he teased his forthcoming music by tweeting, “Not feel good music. Feel INCREDIBLE music.” A man of his word, he’s dutifully crafted some dumb-but-fun tunes. Take the Katy Perry-featuring “Feels.” The closest the album comes to a standout hit, it revolves around a silly refrain (“Don’t be afraid to catch feels”) that's so meaningless it may as well be about fishing for sunshine emojis. But Harris has always understood the finer points of mindlessness. Clubbing, after all, is about hedonism, escape, feeling invincible with a cocktail in your hand. Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 1 is a breezy distraction from an emcee stalling while he plans his next party trick. Neither reinventing pop nor changing the course of dance music, it’s a vacation of an album that doubles as the producer’s own stopgap until his next wave comes along.
