FEATURE:
Revisiting...
Jessie Ware - What's Your Pleasure?
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IN the next part…
of this feature, I am looking at an underrated album from 2018. The aim of Revisiting… is to explore albums released over the past few years that are either not played that much or are timely now. I do Second Spin: this is a feature that evaluates albums from any time that are under-played and under-appreciated. Today, one of last year’s best albums is in my thoughts. Jessie Ware’s What’s Your Pleasure? got some huge reviews. She recently recorded a song with Kylie Minogue, Kiss of Life. Ware is hitting the road after a long time away from the spotlight. Creating music that needs to be heard from the stage, I spent some time with her fourth studio album when it was released. Aside from recommending people get the album on vinyl, I am going to put in a couple of reviews for What’s Your Pleasure? Before that, I wanted to explore a couple of interviews where Jessie Ware talked about the album. Very different from her 2017 album, Glasshouse, What’s Your Pleasure? was one of the most important releases of 2020. A hugely enjoyable and impressive album, I think that it is Ware’s best work. The reason for including it here is that the album does not get a lot of coverage at the moment. It got love last year and was widely shared, though I think What’s Your Pleasure? is a record that deserves more time and focus now.
Ware spoke with Under the Radar about an album that was like a new phase for her. You get this sense of someone who has been rejuvenated and reconnected with her love of music:
“I’ve said it before but it made me feel like a new artist again,” Ware says of the reaction, speaking from her study in London on a dreary winter’s evening. “As an artist who’s on their fourth album and as a 35-year-old woman in music, the buzz starts to dwindle,” she adds. “It felt like this new injection that was really amazing, especially because it was fully on my terms.”
When Ware first emerged in the early 2010s, her debut album Devotion found a sweet spot between critical acclaim and commercial accessibility—cool enough to be nominated for the UK’s prestigious Mercury Prize while also securing recognition from the pop-focused BRIT Awards. However, that balancing act proved hard to maintain and by her third album (the underrated Glasshouse), she found herself losing favor with both critics and the record-buying public. Her response, in her words, was to lock herself away from her label and to tune out the “noise” from the music industry. What’s Your Pleasure?, produced with musician and friend James Ford, was to be a record for her—a committed exploration of a love of dance music that had long been present in the background of her career.
Ware says the album was produced in almost complete contrast with the nights of excess and romance portrayed in its songs. “It was James and I very much on a 10-4 basis—we both have families so we’d dip into the studio and work in the daytime,” she says. There, they dreamed up escapist fantasies inspired by the queer dancefloors of ’80s New York, the camp disco of Fern Kinney, and the effortless cool of Róisín Murphy. When the album was finally released in the middle of a pandemic, its timing was a mixed blessing—appearing at a time when most dancefloors around the world were closed but in the middle of a surprise disco revival.
Ware describes the similarities between her record and those by pop heavyweights like Dua Lipa and Lady Gaga as “weird serendipity” rather than a planned approach. “It did kind of feel like we were all huddled in a boardroom meeting talking about each other like ‘she’ll take a more French disco-house approach…,’” she jokes. “I wish that had been the case because I would have been in a room with Lady Gaga and Róisín and Dua and Kylie [Minogue].” In fact, Ware admits that she even considered trying to get Minogue on the album’s sultry title track. “Kylie has those moments like ‘Slow’ and ‘Confide In Me’ where you just want to make love to her…she just oozes that sex,” she says, adding that the two of them have discussed the possibility of recording a new song together.
The current state of the music industry may be deeply uncertain at the moment—with scaled back release schedules as labels wait for a more opportune environment for new albums—but Ware suggests that her fans may be hearing from her again sooner rather than later. The six months following the release of What’s Your Pleasure? would have been spent on tour in normal circumstances. Instead, Ware has had time to consider a follow-up. She describes the new album, which is apparently halfway done, in vague terms—“more live,” “upbeat,” “more pace”—and notes that many of the same collaborators have returned, including Ford, Metronomy’s Joe Mount, and songwriters Alexandra Govere and Daniel Parker.
“What’s Your Pleasure? awakened a confidence which has been so incredible for me as a songwriter and an artist and a mother and a woman and all of that,” Ware says. “I think we can keep on going and the fact that we’ve been having to do the majority of sessions over Zoom and it’s working—that’s really interesting”.
I was interested to discover why What’s Your Pleasure? was such a shift for Ware. Exploring Disco and Dance in such a vivid and varied way was not something we had heard before from her. It was almost like Ware returned to the start of her career. Bold and enormously memorable, Ware spoke with Elle last year:
“Why this album, and why now?
I needed to kickstart a love affair with music [again]. I came off tour and thought, “I need something more in my live shows.” I needed to listen to my fans. I’d made this slow, confessional record, but maybe people wanted something else from me. And that’s fine! I wanted to do that too. I needed to do something different, to test myself. And I needed to enjoy making the music again.
How did you find that pleasure again?
It was about being with the right people and departing from the wrong people. I never knew how much management could change your life. I’d lost my confidence, and I didn’t understand it because my podcast [Table Manners] was taking off and people were really buying into this thing that was a pure accident. I was losing my voice. This is not me saying I don’t believe in the last two records, but I was seeking approval from people whose opinions I didn’t value. It became this imbalance that wasn’t right and wasn’t nurturing and wasn’t good for me.
I’m the breadwinner. I was getting to the point where music was having to be like bread and butter [and] I was going to potentially have to make decisions I didn’t wanna make, which would jeopardize and discredit both the music I was making and my artistry. Everything had to implode a little bit for it all to work out. With this record [it was all about] new management, a new label, one executive producer, a very small amount of people working on it, and intimacy. I needed everything to feel less intimidating and pressurized.
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It’s been fascinating to watch you intentionally untether yourself from the traditional “album, rest, album, rest” cycle when you started releasing one-off singles last year. How did that rollout change your mind about music as a passion again?
Subconsciously, it was a way of testing the waters to see if people were gonna dig this direction. I enjoyed that freedom of being like, “Here’s a song, I hope you like it. If you don’t, it doesn’t fucking matter, because I’ve got some more tunes.” I also knew that I was gonna have a baby, so I didn’t want to have to “hide myself away as a pregnant woman.” It felt ridiculous. So I was just like, “Right, more music, here you go.”
The former president of Virgin, Ted Cockle, said, “The world has changed since you put your last record out. You’re making dance music—that’s what you want to make. Put it out like a DJ. People don’t care about this big buildup for an album anymore. They just wanna fucking hear your music!”
Was part of the fun of making this record a result of you setting your own expectations for once?
I didn’t want people telling me what they thought. I wanted to know what I felt—and much respect to my label for letting me do that and not being overbearing. I think they knew I needed to get back into the groove of enjoying myself, to take some ownership and control back. I didn’t know how much I needed it until I was doing it. I realized I was making this amazing music nobody knew about! At the time, I was presenting Later… with Jools Holland. Everyone thought, “Oh, so she’s gone from podcasting to presenting a music show…what is going on? I hope Jessie’s ok!” And I’m like, “I’ve got this diamond record happening! This is fun!”
What feels different for you now?
I feel like a new artist again. There’s a real demand and interest in this record, which I haven’t felt since the first. Maybe because people have bought into the podcast, they feel like they wanna hear what I’ve got to say, even though they can hear it every bloody week. [Laughs] I feel like I’m getting opportunities I never would’ve gotten if the podcast hadn’t happened, like the TV shows I’m getting booked on. The confidence I’m showing in the delivery of these things, I feel like I’ve really grown. I’m proud of myself.
That confidence feels so apparent, especially in watching you pepper your performances with choreography all of a sudden.
I would never have done that! I got so tired of apologizing for being in the room. It wears you down and you believe you don’t deserve to be there. I finally feel like I do deserve to be there. I suit being a 35-year-old woman. I feel comfortable in my skin and with the music I’m making. I don’t want to complain because I know lots of people don’t get to a fourth album. I know I’ve got so much to appreciate. I just got disillusioned. I’ve always been in my own lane, musically, but people wanted me to get into the commercial lane, which I don’t think suits me. I made this record out of feeling and groove instead.
Has your relationship with “up tempo” songs changed?
I wanted to do a record that was driven by music and less by lyrics. The lyrics are always important, but it was very much about a beat dictating where we went. It felt fun and freeing. You’d be like, “How’re we going to navigate a Jessie Ware song around this beat?” I liked the challenge”.
To round off, I wanted to highlight some reviews. There are more than enough positive reviews to choose from. I am going to start with NME’s take on What’s Your Pleasure?
“But on her fourth album – ‘What’s Your Pleasure?’ – Ware rediscovers her strut, on a record filled with euphoric disco, funk and groove. Produced by Simian Mobile Disco‘s James Ford, Ware also assembled a crack team of co-writers and collaborators including synth-pop extraordinaire Kindness, trendy composer Jules Buckley (who did the orchestral arrangements and strings) and Metronomy‘s Joseph Mount. The result is a collection of exhilarating floor-fillers that fuse future-facing production with heady ‘80s sounds.
‘Ooh La La’ – with its swaggering bassline and flirty lyrics – is a slinky slice of filthy funk, and ‘In Your Eyes’ a woozy amalgam of rippling synths and smoky strings. ‘Step Into My Life’ meanwhile is a shimmering, new-wave laced smasher that evokes images of the New York disco scene. Despite borrowing heavily from the past, there’s an element of timelessness that threads through the album, particularly on songs like ‘Mirage’ (a tropical treat that borrows from Bananarama, and wouldn’t feel out of place on Robyn‘s ‘Honey’) and ‘Soul Control’ (an effervescent radio ready hit that could easily fit on Dua Lipa’s ‘Future Nostalgia’). And although there are a few lulling moments (the icy ‘The Kill’, minimalistic ‘Adore You’), for the most part ‘What’s Your Pleasure?’ is filled with nostalgia-laced treats.
An intoxicating cocktail of seductive beats, exhilarating choruses and sleek production, ‘What’s Your Pleasure?’ is pure escapism. Moving away from the wistful melancholy that permeated her last record, here Jessie Ware takes to the dancefloor – and you’ll want to join her”.
To round off, Pitchfork posted a glowing review of an amazing album. I have been listening to it ever since it was released. I d hope that Jessie Ware continues along the same Disco lines that we heard on her current record:
“On her new album, Jessie Ware sounds like the host of the kind of party you heard about in ‘70s Manhattan—velvet banquettes and powdery surfaces, mink coats and cigarette holders, and club names that were enigmatic numbers, or—post-gay liberation and pre-AIDS—sincerely promised sanctuary, paradise. You can imagine Ware taking a scene newcomer under her wing, detailing the venue’s clandestine corners, advising which watered-down liquor to avoid—and anyway, don’t you deserve champagne?
Disco has been a shared obsession of late for both chart juggernauts and Ware’s own peers, but her reverence for the era may be the most literal, down to her flash-lit portrait on the album cover, the spitting image of Warhol’s iconic polaroid of Bianca Jagger. Here, Ware is a lycanthropic party girl, coming alive under the mirrorball with breathy flirtations over disco-funk and vibrant Hi-NRG, recreated deftly by chief producer James Ford. Her wonderland is, to quote Fran Leibowitz’s one-time description of Studio 54, made for “sex and dancing.” (Ware says as much of the record herself.)
Over the Italo disco daydream of a title track, Ware presents a dessert trolley of options for, ahem, “dancing sideways.” “Come on now push/Press/More/Less,” she sighs over neon-streaked synths. “Step Into My Life,” co-produced by Ford and Kindness, is a masterclass of orchestral funk, with Ware insisting “I don’t wanna talk, no conversation.” “Save A Kiss,” an outlier, extends the album’s palette to kinetic electropop, which Ware’s voice floods with romantic yearning.
In a recent interview, Ware described What’s Your Pleasure? as a celebration of her flourishing confidence. It has less of the soul-searching of Ware’s previous album Glasshouse, yet zooms in on a lighter facet of her personality, and is threaded with a camp sense of humor that reflects disco’s frivolity as well as the cheekiness that is all over Ware’s Table Manners podcast but has been largely missing from her recorded music. Her airy vocals feel like secrets whispered, confidences offered, recalling Diana Ross’s supple quiver over Nile Rogers and Bernard Edwards’ beats and, in “Mirage (Don’t Stop),” coming close to Donna Summer’s orgasmic rapture. The strutting chorus of “Read My Lips” doubles down on the song’s oral innuendo with kissy sound effects, bringing to mind Anita Ward’s disco classic “Ring My Bell.” The rubberized bass jam “Ooh La La” is a riot of saucy ad libs and tooting car horns, and the frothy, Jellybean-esque “Soul Control” centers on the delightful frippery “We touch and it feels like: Woo!” It is a joy to hear Ware sounding so relaxed.
Disco music never liked to consider what happens when the music stops, but Ware allows a little of her signature psychodrama to creep into the nocturnal escapades she describes, and the flecks of ennui make the highs even higher. Over the darkly pulsing synths of “In Your Eyes,” Ware is racked with insecurities. “Would you follow me, with no guarantee?” she asks, before allowing herself a rare belting vocal. “Adore You,” produced by Metronomy’s Joseph Mount, commits what on paper might seem like a cardinal sin: it Auto-Tunes Ware’s pristine voice to a robotic murmur, the kind that could soundtrack a lonely android searching the cosmos. But her intonations (“Lean in...move slow”; “don’t go”) reshape the song’s mood with every syllable, in a nuance that makes the smallest shifts feel seismic”.
An incredible album from last year, I think we should all revisit What’s Your Pleasure? It is such a rich and satisfying experience. You can put it on at any time and feel uplifted and improved. That is testament to the passion and commitment that Ware displays throughout. If you have not spun What’s Your Pleasure? for a while, then I think now is a good time…
TO play it again.