2024 album of the year
Previously: 2024 albums of the year - the not-quite-but-still-good runners-up
Jamie xx - In Waves
Whether you realise it or not, your own prejudice dictates the music you listen to, pay attention to, or let pass you by.
A song can be slaved over by a dozen highly skilled professionals and refined to be an exquisite aural marvel, but if that song is released 'by' a girl in her early twenties there'll be a group of people who see it as somehow inferior to something knocked out in half an hour by some limp-haired guy with a guitar in his garage. You dictate the 'worth' of all art with all sorts of weird and irrational cultural biases.
I have a particular contempt for a particular demographic: groups of kids from affluent backgrounds who take up home in parts of London that are becoming gentrified and make music that is primarily indie rock but with elements of something else - dance or garage or grime or general electronica.
It's such a cliché. Get daddy to fund a lifestyle, do some pretty basic beats over ethereal vocals, use connections to hype up whatever you're dropping on Soundcloud. I hated how lazy it seemed, how privileged. How could anything good be made under such a cynical culture?
And then I heard Gosh, track one from Jamie xx's first album In Colour sometime in 2015 and gave myself a good talking to.
In my prejudiced mind, Jamie xx resides in that achingly trendy part of the culture that looks a bit like a Dolce & Gabbana photoshoot. It's somewhere above you, very serious and very sharp. It the part of the world that is resolutely Not For Me. No sir. I was certain it would be pretentious, the antithesis of fun.
In Colour was not that at all. It was a mishmash of snatches of all sorts of cultures over catchy beats. It was exciting. It was varied. It was fun fun fun. I loved it enough that it became one of my favourites of that year:
In Colour is an undeniably British dance/electronica album that manages to be unlike every British dance/electronica cliché, British in the truly multicultural sense rather than the tea-and-crumpets love-a-duck sense, dance/electronica in a clever ambient-yet-melodic way. It is a calm observation of London at 3am on a weekend, a study of the gritty urban landscape by an old professor who has little time for big beats but wearily acknowledges their existence if he must.
In Waves is not a retread of In Colour. It is resolutely in the same style - the flick of styles from one track to the next, the same playful beats and effects, the willingness to drop everything to silence and bring it back up slowly, the recognisable protracted sample.
What's different and particularly striking is that In Waves moves beyond merely documenting London nightlife to become something much broader, much more empathetic, much more loving. This is an album about treating each other right, about feeling the rhythm in my arms, about just something that I get from just being around you, about you giving me life. It's a celebration not of a culture but of connection, of finding kinship and being excited by other people.
And it does it in such an exciting way. It begins almost coyly with Wanna's repeated quiet refrain about 'never letting go' before the segue into the big drumbeat of Treat Each Other Right declaring the album's intention: If you put your trust in me darling / I'll never treat you wrong.
Then it's just fun big beat moment followed by fun trippy beat moment followed by relaxed beat moment repeated and repeated and repeated.
As a cynical old bugger, it's heartwarming. It would be easy for me to focus on the massive joyous bangers in Baddy On The Floor and Life (with Robyn putting in her usual brilliant performance) but to do so would be to dismiss the intent of the album. It's about joy, sure, but it's about the joy of connecting with other people.
Don't you want to feel it too?
Lockdown hit all of us hard. Personal circumstances meant that it wasn't until 2023 that my family could shake it off fully. I missed people, I missed being around people, anonymous crowds and close friends alike.
This year has been a year where we've joyously embraced the world whenever the opportunity and good health allow: two big stadium gigs, two big social holidays, plenty of little trips and visits and travel. 2024 has been a reintroduction back to the world; In Waves reflects the year perfectly. I have been grateful for the moment, grateful that the past is gone and aware the future is uncertain. I have continued to dispel my cynicism and embrace whatever Good Stuff might exist out there in the world.
Sometimes an album hits hard not just because it is great within itself but because it reflects you and your world. I am fortunate that In Waves is just such a record.