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Jessie Ware
That! Feels Good!
PMR/EMI
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The world felt very different three years ago, didn’t it? Though my own memories of spring 2020 become less vivid with each passing day (and thankfully so), the ambiguity and tragedy of that nascent phase of the then-new pandemic will likely remain with me—and most of us—forever.
During that irresolute time when none of us could really grasp what might lie ahead, we sought various forms of solace and escapism within the antidotes of our choice. Drinking. Eating. Baking. Reading. Exercising. Binge-watching. Whatever we could find to distract us from the grim realities of the day, even if just for fleeting moments, became vitally important to sustaining our sanity, safeguarding our survival.
As I can only imagine is the case for many of you reading this review, I gravitated toward music. I dove even deeper into my well-established obsession by leaning into the records I love, playing them past midnight into the early hours of the morning, usually through my headphones while seated at my dining room table or corner desk in my Brooklyn apartment, as my wife and daughters slept peacefully in adjacent rooms. I doubled down on my devotion to discovering new music, no matter how time-consuming that rabbit hole turned out to be.
And of all the bright lights I found along the way, Jessie Ware’s What’s Your Pleasure? was arguably the most luminous. Released in late June 2020, Ware’s euphoric fourth studio affair offered compelling testament to the redemptive power of music to invigorate and heal the mind, body, and soul. While its poignant precursor Glasshouse (2017) was “quite a personal record” by her own admission, What’s Your Pleasure? found its creator moving beyond the autobiographical contours of her songwriting to embrace more universally resonant messages, juxtaposed with more overtly dancefloor devised arrangements.
Even the album title itself evokes a newfound selflessness and acute awareness of others’ needs, as if the magnanimous Ware is offering to help fulfill whatever our pleasures happen to be. And for those of us who had our ears and minds open at the time, we benefited greatly from her generosity.
Rather remarkably, yet perhaps not surprisingly, album number five actually ups the ante on the indulgent, hedonistic ethos of What’s Your Pleasure?. “This is an upbeat, fun, engaging record,” Ware explains to The Daily Telegraph, alluding to the album’s exclamatory title. “Let’s dance, let’s kiss, let’s move. Those exclamation marks are me just shouting it from the rooftop. You know, when I announced the album, somebody said that Shania Twain did it with ‘Man! I Feel Like A Woman!’ and it did very well for her. I thought, well, perfect.”
With production duties split nearly evenly between her longtime collaborator James Ford (Arctic Monkeys, Depeche Mode, Florence + The Machine), who blesses six of the album’s ten tracks, and Stuart Price (Dua Lipa, Madonna, Kylie Minogue), who oversees the other four, That! Feels Good! is a perceptibly more soul-imbued set of songs than its disco-driven antecedent. This is, in part, due to the stellar crew of musicians that Ware has invited to the festivities, including Dave Okumu (drums) and Kokoroko’s Sheila Maurice-Grey (horns). “I’ve always longed to make soul music,” Ware confides to The New York Times. “I’ve done bits and bobs of it, but this felt very focused and authentic.”
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Ware summons this soulful spirit most palpably on two of the album’s three official singles unveiled to date. “Inspired by divas like Donna Summer, Evelyn ‘Champagne’ King, Teena Marie and Chaka Khan” as Ware frames it in an official press statement, “Pearls” is an effervescent, harmony-rich strut of a song that illuminates her expansive vocal range. The first song written for the album and the third single released, the uplifting ode to revival “Begin Again” conjures the symphonic aura heard on the anthemic insta-classic “Remember Where You Are” from What’s Your Pleasure?, replete with an enveloping orchestral swell evocative of Charles Stepney’s beloved arrangements with Rotary Connection. It’s an absorbing listen featuring some of Ware’s most crystalline vocals heard throughout the album.
A veritable feast for the ears, the album-opening title track commences with a chorus of overlapping voices declaring “That feels good,” with enough ambiguity embedded within the suggestive refrain so as to allow listeners to define exactly what that might be for themselves. The song then segues into a repetitive, orgasmic-like mantra followed by Ware’s seductive spoken words and whispers that she delivers atop the funk-fueled, brass-blessed track.
Released as the album’s lead single nearly a year ago in July 2022, the propulsive “Free Yourself” packs a powerful blast of piano-driven house that would surely make the genre’s legendary, Chicago-bred pioneer Marshall Jefferson proud. “Free yourself / Keep on moving up that mountain top,” the defiant Ware exhorts in the song’s chorus. “Why don’t you / Please yourself / If it feels so good then don’t you / Baby don’t you stop.”
Dismissing superficial connotations of beauty in exchange for a more substantive definition of the word, the buoyant “Beautiful People” finds Ware extoling the virtues—and indeed, the beauty—to be discovered among the kindred spirits you share space with on the dancefloor. “(The song is) meant to celebrate clubbing and dancing, and that place and release that you get when you go the club,” Ware recently contextualized via her Twitter feed. “All the beautiful people that you make friends with and become connected with for the night.”
Other notable moments on That! Feels Good! surface in the form of the windswept, retro-soul ballad “Hello Love” that testifies to the redemptive power of love, the not-so-thinly veiled allusions to sexual hedonism heard on the clever kitsch of “Shake the Bottle,” and the album-concluding sensuality of “These Lips,” in which the coquettish yet commanding Ware proclaims “It’s gonna take / Two / Two hearts / Two hours / Two more / And I’m telling you / That these / Two lips / Could do so much more.”
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone UK, Ware explained, “I’m in my Age of Aquarius. I feel the most confident I’ve ever felt, stepping into making music. I really want to celebrate the beauty of an album, and what an album can represent.” Well, mission accomplished. And the radiant That! Feels Good! represents the fruit of Ware’s steadfast commitment to her songcraft, which she continues to cultivate with grace and pure, unequivocal joy. Self-assured yet never crossing over into self-indulgence, Ware is an intrinsically selfless and egalitarian singer-songwriter, who places herself, her collaborators and us, the listeners, on an even plane when it comes to indulging in the rich and rewarding musical experiences at hand. “This album is no longer just mine, it’s all yours!” she proclaimed this morning, encapsulating the point to a tee.
That! Feels Good! is a stunning, soul-affirming musical statement from an artist who assuredly has so much more to say—while having nothing to prove—as her career continues to ascend to greater creative heights. Whenever you’re keen to escape the doldrums of the day and elevate your spirit, drop the needle or press play on That! Feels Good! and your desires shall be fulfilled in droves.
Notable Tracks: “Beautiful People” | “Begin Again” | “Free Yourself” | “Pearls”
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