In Waves review | Jamie xx boldly returns with dancefloor finesse

Jamie xx’s In Waves is an invitation, a beckoning into the strange, blurred edges of the modern clubbing experience. Nearly a decade since In Colour, Jamie returns not as a nostalgic curator of lost raves, but as something more interesting: a producer caught in the thrum of discordant energies, straddling the demands of a world that wants it both ways: euphoria and isolation. Dance and solitude. All at once.

We open with ‘Wanna’, where the familiar UK garage sounds don’t so much announce themselves as seep into the room, like sunlight through a cracked blind. There’s a sense here that Jamie xx knows exactly what you expect – beats and drops, a predictable nostalgia trip – but he refuses to indulge you. Instead, it’s a slow burn, inviting you to step carefully through the sonic haze before the tempo kicks in and propels you into something altogether less comfortable.

It’s in the standout track, ‘Waited All Night’, where Jamie’s old xx bandmates Romy and Oliver Sim appear. But this is no sentimental reunion. Their voices are diced and reassembled, fractured into something unrecognisable yet still haunting in its melancholy. You feel the ghost of their former collabs lurking in the background, but here, they’ve been stripped of all their original softness, like a faded memory that refuses to let go.

Then comes ‘Baddy on the Floor,’ a relentless burst of house energy, helped along by the ever-imposing Honey Dijon. Here, Jamie indulges in the sheer joy of the beat, but never without a sly wink, as if to remind you that the dancefloor is as much a place for forgetting as it is for remembering. In Waves does this brilliantly: it disorients you and leaves you spinning. Familiar sounds and feelings are pulled apart and reconstructed into something both alien and intimate.

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Jamie xx has, in essence, crafted a record that’s as much about disconnection as it is about connection. In Waves reflects our fractured reality back at us, but does so with a sound that insists on movement. It leaves you wanting more, even as it tells you you’ve had quite enough.

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