You can throw me to the shock of a new sensation

Continuing my trip down The Guardian's top 50 albums of 2023

#5 is another one we've met before - the snappy album titles continue with Mitski's The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We, which was an album I really wanted to like but it just didn't hit the spot for me.

#4 : That! Feels Good! - Jessie Ware


That! Feels Good! is couched in rapturous hedonism and propelled by breathless ecstasy, Ware inviting you to step into your pleasure. What’s more, she leads by example. “I’m a lover, a freak and a mother / Walking on the line, it’s my human nature / I crave a little danger,” she winks on shimmering satin floorfiller Pearls, before giving you a little push towards the disco ball: “I know you wanna / Go to the moon / But if you don’t go, you’ll never get there.” On Free Yourself, Ware rides bucking pianos, funky bass and Italo disco strings, lassoing together satisfaction and sexual autonomy; Beautiful People, with Ware’s grinning self-aware rapping, cowbells and cajoling horn section, prescribes the communion of the dancefloor as medicine for life’s melancholia: “Put the day on ice, pour a ciocktail / Mix your joy with misery.”

Jessie is one I listened to in passing in a week where there were SEVEN new entries in the top ten - I liked it but didn't pay an awful of attention to it, so will be interested to revisit it to see what I think of it.  

Yeah, that! does indeed feel good! - it's the sort of album you'd like Kylie Minogue or Róisin Murphy to make but they don't quite manage to hit the spot.  It shimmers and sashays beautifully - she sounds like she's having a great time and she wants you to have one too.  It's poppy disco of the highest order - if you like that sort of thing then you should check this out.  It's not usually my sort of thing, but I really liked it - and it's a classy album cover as well.

Wikipedia tells us this is her fifth album and that the title track features cameos from various people including, somewhat surprisingly, Kylie Minogue and Róisin Murphy - others featured are Gemma Arterton, Clara Amfo, Aisling Bea, Jamie Demetriou and Jessie's mum (which is a somewhat strange mix).  The critics were very nice about the album with Pitchfork getting it pretty close for me with "a genre revival album that's painstakingly true to its source material, but doesn't sound like a curdled rehash" and PopMatters made it top of their year-end list.  It did well here, getting to #3 but also got into the lower reaches of various European charts - with #25 in Poland being the best it did.

"Customers also listened to" Jake Shears, Alison Goldfrapp, Kylie Minogue and Róisin Murphy - it's almost like I know what I'm talking about, isn't it?  I haven't minded most of Jessie's work, but this is a step up for me - you should definitely check it out.

#8/7/6 - Three more well put together albums
#3 - I like this

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