What can a night out mean? It’s something Jamie xx has been thinking about for the better part of a decade: partly as a result of the pandemic, partly due to the mainstream rise of palatable club “classics”, and also because to answer that question felt key to whether he would even keep making music.
Nine years after In Colour, In Waves is the artist’s answer to that question. As per its title, it’s an album that undulates, turns and takes its time, spinning between moments of euphoria and self-reflection on a beat. And like the best nights out, it has those moments of tenderness that take you by surprise. Life, a collaboration with Robyn and an obvious, joy-fuelled highlight, gives us the dryest vocal delivery in a dance track this year (“strong torso“). On Dafodil, Kelsey Lu’s and John Glacier’s breathy voices chorus about a night out in London (Lovely sweetness that filled the air / Came from a daffodil in your hair / I placed it there); each line feels like glancing upon memories just out of reach. And I love the record’s final track, Falling Together, in which every word registers like lights flashing on a dancing figure – it brings to mind cinema and rolling credits, like Denis Lavant at the end of Beau Travail or the slo-mo footage of British dancers through the eras in Mark Leckey’s Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore.
“There were definitely points where I was like, ‘It’s been too long’, which was just not helping me finish it in any way,” Jamie says when we meet in Hackney in September. “But I’m glad that I could do it like this.” Our conversation is in the middle of possibly his busiest stretch of press, in the build-up to the album release and, inevitably, the mega tour that will immediately follow it. Those tour dates include two Ally Pally shows in his home neighbourhood of north London, taking place a week or two after we speak – surely the beginnings, for some in the audience at least, of one of those great nights out in London.
Claire Marie Healy: Tell me about the record’s various spoken-word elements. Falling Together, with the female speaker’s monologue, is really special.
Jamie xx: That’s Oona Doherty. She’s a choreographer. I went to see her show in Hackney Wick, like eight years ago or something, and it blew me away. In the show [Hope Hunt], she arrives in this souped-up car, blasting tunes, parks in the middle of the crowd, and then gets out of the car and dances. Nobody had any idea what was going on. It encapsulated so much of what I love about dance and dance music. Her voice, and energy, are just so sick. When I put her monologue to a piece of music I was already working with, it was one of the eureka moments where I thought I’d really gotten close to finishing the album. That’s why I called it that: falling together.
CMH: Do you find that that’s often how it goes in terms of when the collaborators come in – like completing a piece of a puzzle you’ve already started?
Jamie xx: Sometimes. It was like that with Robyn. But there’s also the people who don’t make it on the record: like if you imagine, I’ve been in my studio on my own for weeks, just losing my mind and only having myself to bounce ideas off of, and then I go into a session. It’s so excruciating being in a silent room with somebody new, knowing you’ve got to come up with something in a few days. But it usually works out well. And even if it doesn’t, at the end of that, I guess I go home and feel renewed and excited to make music on my own, which is my favourite thing.
CMH: So you’re basically using the awkward experience of the sessions to enjoy your own company again.
Jamie xx: Exactly.
CMH: Can we talk about Dafodil? I’m curious how those elements came together, because it is so layered, but also has this amazing clarity.
Jamie xx: I just sent an email out to everyone during the pandemic: can you write something about a summer night in London? And I got loads of verses back from loads of big people, so I was very appreciative. But those that made it on the track were just instant when I first heard them. Everyone was a touring musician who definitely had a fun night in London. I did try to make, like, the epic version with everyone … There’s a version of it that’s 20 minutes long.
“I don’t think I quite grasped it then, but it was so exciting to go to Plastic People and hear the music that came from the area that I grew up in. It was probably one of the last things that can happen like that, where it’s not instantly global” – Jamie xx
CMH: You need that as an album, actually. Is there a feeling of going out being freshly important, after Covid, that came into this record?
Jamie xx: It did. And there were definitely a few years that sent me spinning where, like, dance music became pop music. A lot of it seemed kind of vapid to me, and yet the world really engaged in it. I didn’t. And I felt like my place among all this was lost to me because I was really working very hard to try and make everything meaningful – and as you know, taking a long time. Meanwhile there are some artists that were just throwing out new music every couple weeks. I spent time just trying to get over that feeling.
CMH: Was The Floor [Jamie’s pop-up club over the summer, and personal tribute to clubs like Plastic People] part of that process of reconnection?
Jamie xx: Absolutely. And I have to say I was really pleasantly surprised at the mix in the crowd: really young people having a great time and losing their minds, people who’ve been there with me from the start who are my age – you know, who are away for the night from the kids – and also older ravers that love it. It’s been like that with the band [The xx] ever since the beginning as well. Somehow, all generations really appreciate it.
It was always the dream to make it something more permanent – there were several buildings that I nearly bought over the last ten years – but I guess I followed the advice of everybody in my life instead. But I’m so glad I didn’t do it, because it would have ruined my life. I mean, just doing it for ten days was so intense. But I’d love to do it like that again in different places, maybe in a different city in the UK.
CMH: What’s a historic dance floor you wish you could have experienced?
Jamie xx: The Haçienda.
CMH: Do you like that movie, 24 Hour Party People?
Jamie xx: Yes! They really nailed it. It’s hard to do a music biopic and it not be cheesy, and it actually captures the vibe of that era, as much as I know. But anyway, I love that and also Love & Mercy, The Beach Boys one with John Cusack and Paul Dano.
CMH: I was thinking about the London scene you came up in, back when I would go to The xx shows in the late 00s. And also the current, wild success of Charli xcx, who was such an Indie Cindy in those days. Do you think there was something essentially creative about that peak indie time, from which all these musical styles and careers spun off?
Jamie xx: Looking back, it was very special. I don’t think I quite grasped it then, but it was so exciting to go to, say, The Old Blue Last and see all these bands that are now big bands, or go to Plastic People and hear the music that came from the area that I grew up in. There was fashion around it, but it wasn’t super branded. It was probably one of the last things that can happen like that, where it’s not instantly global. I just feel very lucky to have been part of something like that.
CMH: Looking at In Waves in its totality now, do you feel it’s reflective of all these different versions of you from all these years in between, or does it feel like a mirror reflection of you, right now in this moment?
Jamie xx: It’s really both. When I was making In Colour, I was super nostalgic, but for a time that I hadn’t really experienced, because I was touring all the time with The xx; thinking about UK rave culture, just lapping it all up, and making my love letter to it. Since then, there’s been so much dance music that is very nostalgic, to the point of just directly copying these past forms. So I wanted to really sit in the moment, be present, and cut out everything else that was going on. The whole record really feels like this current moment to me, but each track contains portions of the time that I took making it. And I’m not bored of it yet. I’ve been testing it on the road for years now.
My two favourite records in the world are Radiohead’s In Rainbows and The Avalanches’ Since I Left You. The reason being, every time I listen to either, I find something new that I didn’t realise was there before. They’re so dense, but so spacious. That’s what I want this record to be.
In Waves by Jamie xx is out now via Young.
