Save articles for later
Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time.
Feelgood pop: Jessie Ware’s follow-up to her 2020 instant classic is another euphoric crowd-pleaser.
Jessie Ware, That! Feels Good!
★★★★
Perhaps one of the more remarkable things about Jessie Ware’s euphoric fifth album That! Feels Good! is just how close we came to not hearing it. The British singer – who broke out in the early 2010s with the best-selling album Devotion and as a guest vocalist on singles by SBTRKT and Disclosure – was poised to give up music after the lacklustre reception to her 2017 album Glasshouse. In interviews, Ware would recount the story of “an absolute Jesus Christ of a shocker” performance at Coachella, after which her mother simply told her to quit.
Ware didn’t exactly quit, but she did step back from music for a period to focus on her podcast Table Manners, in which she and her mum Lennie invite celebrities around for dinner and a chat. The pair’s cheeky banter and warmth (along with copious amounts of wine) was a winning combination, and the podcast became hugely successful, hosting everyone from Ed Sheeran to London Mayor Sadiq Khan to Sam Smith to Stanley Tucci.
With the pressure off, and a new record label in tow, Ware went into the studio with renowned producer James Ford with one goal in mind: to just have fun. The result was game-changing. Ware’s 2020 album What’s Your Pleasure? was the finest of her career, a glittering exploration of disco and the sounds of the London clubs Ware grew up in. Worlds away from the rigidity of Glasshouse, What’s Your Pleasure? was freeing, sexy, and oh so bloody fun.
With a swell of critical acclaim and legions of new fans at her back, Ware has kept the party rolling with That! Feels Good!. An expansion of the sonic universe of What’s Your Pleasure?, That! Feels Good! – produced largely with the renowned Clarence Coffee Jr. and Stuart Price – sees Ware even more closely channelling idols like Donna Summer, Diana Ross, R&B and soul legend Teena Marie, and Chaka Khan. If her fourth album was a journey into the dark and seductive depths of the club, her fifth evokes shards of golden light rippling across the dancefloor.
We know what we’re in for from the start: we’re ushered into the record with a swirl of whispering voices, before the title tracks blooms with a springy bassline that could have been transported straight from Stevie Wonder’s Superstition. It sets up a gilded run: Free Yourself (the record’s unofficial and unyielding motto) is rapturous, driving us all up the mountain-top, while Pearls has Ware cut through the shimmering curtain of keys to declare “I’m a lover, a freak and a mother”. Released as the second single from the record, Pearls is a standout on That! Feels Good!, as Ware sends her commanding vocals spinning to the top reaches of her range. When she scrapes the ceiling to sing “let’s just dance”, there’s no option to refuse her.
Where What’s Your Pleasure? entwined elements of ’90s London dance, That! Feels Good! opts for a much more classic palette of disco, R&B, and soul: horns blare and puncture, pianos tinkle and stab, guitars bounce, backing singers create walls of gleaming harmonies. At its centre Ware stands, a bold and jubilant presence reeling the wallflowers onto the dancefloor. Hello Love is warm and intimate, while closer These Lips is another high point, driven by propulsive percussion and plumes of horns – and the cascading melody of the pre-chorus will bring a smile to the most unmoving of faces.
If That! Feels Good! lacks anything, it’s a moment of downtime to break up the partying. But this is a minor quibble, because when it’s this fun who wants the party to stop anyway?
– Jules LeFevre
To read more from Spectrum, visit our page here.
Most Viewed in Culture
From our partners
Source: Read Full Article
