FEATURE:
Modern Heroines
Part Forty-Seven: Jessie Ware
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ONE of my favourite albums…
of last year was Jessie Ware’s What’s Your Pleasure? The fourth album from Ware, she described the album as being one of escapism and groove. The tracks mix House, Disco ad Pop to magnificent effect! As she released the single, Please, on 28th April, it is timely to include Ware in this feature. I think that she will definitely be an icon of the future. As an artist, she has not put a foot wrong – in my estimation -; her albums are all brilliant. Her 2012 debut, Devotion, was a brilliant introduction to a fine British talent. Since then, Ware has explored her sound and crafted some of the best music of the past decade. I am going to focus on her current album. Though, as I always do in this feature, I will end with a career-spanning playlist. I am keen to get to a couple of reviews for What’s Your Pleasure? Just before, it is worth sourcing some interviews that Ware conducted around the time. Before getting to interviews specific to What’s Your Pleasure?, I wanted to drop one in from The Guardian. Ware, among other things, discussed her long-running podcast, Table Manners. We got a glimpse (in the interview) into Ware’s family and early life:
“We talk over her life, her work and how she got here. She grew up the middle child of three in a busy, noisy, secular Jewish household in south London. “So Jewish, we put up our tree in November,” Ware said, recently. The household was dominated by her mother Lennie, a social worker, home cook and general mensch who gave as good as she got in boisterous conversations at the family dinner table.
Her father, John Ware, is a reporter for BBC Panorama. (Last summer he presented an episode about antisemitism in the Labour Party that made a lot of news.) “This is not to say my dad was a bad person,” Ware begins, carefully, “he just wasn’t the most present parent because he was working a lot. My mum made up for it in leaps and bounds.”
Her parents separated when she was 10, and there was a period when she and her father were estranged. “That lasted a long time. We do have a relationship now. It’s getting better and better. It’s that feeling of, life’s too short. And when he’s not being annoying he can actually be quite funny and informative.”
She went to Alleyn’s, a private school in south London, where she became friends with an Oasis-obsessed crowd that included Felix White and Jack Peñate, both of whom would become prominent musicians. Florence Welch was in the year below – the only one, in Ware’s memory, who looked destined for some sort of stardom. For herself, Ware could pick her way through a jazz standard. She was a good bet for the third- or fourth-best part in school musicals. Beyond that, she didn’t have much in the way of industry ambitions. “I was a scaredy cat. I didn’t write songs. Four albums in, it still seems odd that I make music like them.”
The foodie streak, the ravenous appetite, was always there, first evident publicly in the 1990s when Ware appeared with some school pals on a short-lived ITV children’s quiz show called Eat Your Words. As her friend White has recalled, the rules were such that if a contestant answered a question incorrectly, they could still get a consolation point by forcing down a plate of horrid food. (Boiled carrots and custard was one.) As White remembered it, Ware made a series of elementary mistakes, fluffing her counting and her alphabet… but ate her way out of trouble and won. It wouldn’t be the last time.
After graduation, White became part of a band, the Maccabees, while Peñate forged his way as a solo artist and Welch found the stardom they had all predicted. Meanwhile, Ware interned at the Jewish Chronicle. She had a degree in English literature and thought about training as a lawyer. Around 2010, Peñate asked her to join him on tour as a backing singer. Then a series of providential encounters led to Ware singing guest vocals for rising producers such as SBTRKT and Disclosure. She had been accepted on to a law conversion course when PMR Records, Disclosure’s label, offered her a deal. Devotion came out in summer 2012 and – impossibly, it seemed to her – was nominated for the Mercury within a month. “Everything was magical and romantic around that record. I guess I thought, this is just what it’s like!”
The new single, Please, and the What’s Your Pleasure? album shows that Ware has shifted direction since her debut. In fact, I think that her latest album is a huge transformation. I am interested to see if she will continue this sound and sensation into another album. Not that her previous work is weaker in comparison, though I really love the songs on What’s Your Pleasure? In this interview from The New York Times, we discover that, like quite a few artists in 2020, Ware drew inspiration from Disco. It is an interesting move that has resulted in some terrific albums. Will we see a lot more of this through 2021? The New York Times also spoke with James Ford – one of the album’s producers – about a musical highlight of 2020:
“That effusive personality did not exactly come across in Ware’s early music, which was minimalistic and icy-smooth. Her voice — at once muscular and vaporous, soulful and cool — first started drifting through the ether about a decade ago, as a featured guest on tracks by British electronic acts like Disclosure and SBTRKT. An excellent debut solo album, “Devotion,” followed in 2012; it went to No. 5 on the British album chart and was nominated for the esteemed Mercury Prize. Smith, a fellow breakout guest vocalist from Disclosure’s 2013 album “Settle,” described Ware’s music as “the soundtrack of my 20s.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Ana Cuba for The New York Times
Until she didn’t. After “Tough Love,” Ware experienced what she now refers to as her “weird ol’ time in the industry.” Her third album, the sleek, ruminative and highly personal “Glasshouse,” also hadn’t sold as well as her debut; the phrase “adult-contemporary” cropped up (though not necessarily derisively) in several reviews. An ensuing U.S. tour that she admits “hadn’t been planned well” put her an ocean away from her young daughter for nearly a month and left a dent in her own finances. Her fan base — which skews hip and indie-adjacent, especially in the U.S. — was geographically lopsided.
“I’d sell out two shows in Brooklyn,” she said, “and then I’d be in, where was I? Was it Kansas? And you had, like 25 people. Wicked, amazingly funny people, but it was very weird and varied and confusing.”
“This is not me getting my tiny violins out at all,” she added, “but I was losing a lot of money. It’s really expensive to tour. It was just a bit of a mess. I was like, Why am I doing this? It was a big old soul-searching moment.”
Ware made the entirety of “What’s Your Pleasure?” with James Ford, a member of the British electronic duo Simian Mobile Disco and an acclaimed producer for acts like Arctic Monkeys and Florence + the Machine.
“I definitely got the feeling that she wanted to make a record for herself, rather than trying to please other people,” Ford said over FaceTime, after providing a tour of his cozy, synth-filled attic studio where most of “Pleasure” was made. At the time, Ware lived within walking distance of Ford’s house, which gave their sessions a casual ease. Because Ford and Ware both have small children (Ware got pregnant shortly after starting work on the record), they recorded mostly during the day. Family life didn’t impede on the process so much as put it in perspective.
“What’s Your Pleasure?” is a sparkling highlight in a year that has found pop artists from Lady Gaga to Dua Lipa (a recent “Table Manners” guest) reimagining disco for the 21st century. Ford and Ware wanted to pay homage to what they lovingly call “wedding jams,” along with Minnie Riperton soul and “weirdo New York boogie/underground disco.” But “Pleasure” pulls from a varied palette: “Soul Control” has the kinetic energy of Minneapolis funk; “Ooh La La” struts like a long-lost ESG B-side.
“I wanted the sophistication that disco offers, and the melodrama,” Ware said. “It just felt like a bit of a fantasia, and a step away from my real life. Not because I was miserable in my real life — I love my life and my family. But I’d already said all that on my last record. I wanted instead to be a storyteller of these imagined, heightened moments that maybe I wasn’t being able to take part in, in that very moment.” (She and Burrows have been together since they were 18, which she admits does not always make for the most exciting autobiographical songwriting: “Not much salacious hardship. It’s pretty dull. I love it.”)
“It’s a time where people should be able to listen to music that can help them fantasize and move away from reality,” she added. “And that’s the record I made”.
I am going to finish off soon. The last couple of weeks has seen some huge music came out. From Billie Eilish to Self Esteem, the women of music have, as you’d expect, been leading the way and putting out the very best sounds! Jessie Ware, I feel, is among the greatest women in music we have. I do think that we will see so many albums from her - plenty more brilliance is to come. Moving away (slightly) from music, and Ware spoke with Glamour about balancing motherhood with music. We also hear from an artist who is not courting the spotlight and huge stardom:
“Add in the birth of her first child in 2016, and the huge pressure she was putting on herself came to its peak. “I worked way too hard when my daughter was born. I felt I needed to prove that I could do everything, I could balance everything. In hindsight, I absolutely was at breaking point by the end of her first year.”
Nevertheless, she still agreed to tour her third album Glasshouse, which despite giving her another Brit Award nomination for Best British Female and becoming her third top ten album, did not fare well sales-wise. It wasn’t until she performed at Coachella in 2017 for the second time, she reached a turning point in her life and career.
“That Coachella gig was disastrous. Everything that could've gone wrong went wrong. No one turned up to watch me, and to think that a few years before I’d had this heaving tent,” Jessie confides. “I felt like I was in this weird kind of Instagrammy, very immature popularity contest that I was very much losing. So I thought, OK, well, if no one wants to watch me, they're not interested in the music, I should probably sack this in. Why would I want to be in this world? I don't need to do this,’” she says, exasperated at the memory.
Since then, Jessie has shown little interest in courting attention and popularity. “I don't always play the game per se. I'm pretty private. My life is pretty dull,” she says before correcting herself. “No, it's not, it's wonderful, but you know, it's very domesticated. I'm with the same partner that I've been with since I was 18. There are no salacious things that happened to me as a popstar. I don't go to the opening of an envelope.”
I agree, if I was talking to a male star, we would never be having a conversation about how a working father copes with childcare and a career. Jessie thinks sexism is still rife in the music industry and beyond. “They don't ask men how they're going to tour with their children, do they? But you get used to it, you take it with a pinch of salt, and it's also something that I struggled to work out. I once got told that I was being really emotional (in a meeting), and I was being really not-emotional, and I wonder whether they would have said that to a bloke. I didn't rise to it, and I was very calm,” she states. “But you know, it happens. I definitely think there's more of a shelf life for women. I don't want to sound negative because actually I'm able to make the music I want to make, but I'm madly thought of as relatively old and I'm 35!”
I am rounding things off with a couple of reviews for the excellent What’s Your Pleasure? It is a stunning album that received positive reviews right across the broad. This is what AllMusic wrote in their review:
“Rhapsodic dancefloor intimacy became a new specialization for Jessie Ware with "Overtime," the first in a wave of tracks the singer released from 2018 up to the June 2020 arrival of What's Your Pleasure?, her fourth album. Other than "Adore You," a chiming glider made with Metronomy's Joseph Mount, each one in the series was either produced or co-produced by James Ford, consolidating and rerouting a partnership that started during the making of Tough Love. Unlike Ford and Ware's collaborations on that 2014 LP, the new material didn't merely simmer. Hottest of all, "Mirage (Don't Stop)" worked a ripe disco-funk groove with Ware's opening line, "Last night we danced, and I thought you were saving my life" -- sighed in a Bananarama cadence -- a sweet everything if there ever was one. The loved-up energy was kept in constant supply with the dashing "Spotlight," the Freeez-meet-Teena Marie-at-Compass-Point bump of "Ooh La La," and the sneaky Euro-disco belter "Save a Kiss." All but "Overtime" are included here. That makes the album somewhat anti-climactic, but there's no sense in complaining when the preceding singles keep giving and the new material is almost always up to the same standard. Among the fresh standouts, the bounding Morgan Geist co-production "Soul Control" and the dashing "Step Into My Life" recontextualize underground club music with as much might and finesse as anything by Róisín Murphy. Stylistic deviations are few, well-placed, and maintain lyrical continuity with references to the senses as they relate to emotional and physical connection. "In Your Eyes" recalls Massive Attack's "Safe from Harm" with its hypnotizing bassline, subtly theatrical strings, and aching (if less desperate) vocal. Moving in gradually intensifying and similarly slow motion, "The Kill" enables Ware to let down her guard for an unassured lover. "Remember Where You Are," a stirring finale, takes a little trip to cherish the daybreak in Minnie Riperton and Charles Stepney's chamber folk-soul garden, replete with a goosebump-raising group vocal in the chorus. One can almost smell the baby's breath”.
One of the most glowing reviews for What’s Your Pleasure? came from The Guardian. They were impressed by the album’s focus and the fact that Ware could mix the sleek and fun with something quite deep and substantial:
“Rare for a modern major-label pop album, What’s Your Pleasure? focuses on one sound. It feels more modern than Ware’s references to Earth, Wind & Fire and US R&B staple Teena Marie – closer to Moloko, or indeed Róisín Murphy in contemporary disco mode. It’s sleek yet intensely physical: Spotlight vibrates with momentum; the bell-like synths of Adore You are as cool as pond ripples. It also probably couldn’t exist without Robyn’s Honey, another grown-up disco album. (That album’s core personnel, Metronomy’s Joe Mount and Adam Bainbridge, both pop up alongside main producer James Ford.) In very Robyn fashion, Mirage (Don’t Stop) teases its own remix potential, as synth lens-flare, background party chatter and Ware’s silk drape of a voice melt into a juicy reverie. There’s a wealth of great Ware remixes, and What’s Your Pleasure? demands the full club revamp treatment.
Those idiosyncratic textures earn Ware her cheeky pastiches. The skittish Ooh La La is so brazenly rooted in early 80s New York that its insouciant funk not only echoes Rapture and Wordy Rappinghood, but its synth speckles wriggle like Keith Haring art works come to life. Last track Remember Where You Are jumps back earlier into the city’s music history, all velveteen disco gospel, golden vocal harmonies and crackling instrumentation. It’s the curtain call, Ware’s lyrics shifting from sex to comfort as the fantasy fades. “Why don’t you take me home?” she sings.
It’s a poignant final note. Home life, as in domesticity, doesn’t feature here as it did on Glasshouse: Ware has questioned whether people “want to hear about struggling mothers”. Pop should make room for such subjects, although given the industry’s confusion about what to do with older female artists, that feels a long way off. But the superb What’s Your Pleasure? makes a case to reimagine so-called comfort zones as potential lanes of expertise: free pop’s women from the pointless commercial burden to reinvent, let them hone their craft, and you get assured marvels like this”.
I will end things there. One of the best artists in modern music, I am excited to see where Jessie Ware heads. After the magnificent What’s Your Pleasure? last year, many are going to be eager to see Ware on the road – I am sure that we will see gigs soon enough. If you have not heard What’s Your Pleasure? then go and…
SEEK it out now.