- Young
- 2015
You can only see Jamie Smith’s face for about one second in the “Crystalised” video. The xx’s debut single arrived in 2009 with a clip as simple and understated as the song: A crew of South London 20-year-olds wielding their instruments in a plain room, illuminated by the soft, distorted glow of a projector. Singer/songwriters Romy Madley Croft and Oliver Sim look into the light as they exchange sultry verses in a vaguely-stoned lilt. To their far right is Smith -- the producer and DJ now better known as Jamie xx -- locked the fuck in on his drum machine, an overgrown mop of dark brown curls conveniently obscuring his eyes. He’s not the star of “Crystalised”; he’s its heartbeat.
Critics universally lauded the xx’s first album xx. It was a rare and impressive feat for a band plucked from Myspace obscurity to make a debut album that felt so organically complete and considered. Even more rare was a band as quiet, understated, and aloof as the xx garnering the level of hype that they did so early on in their career -- though “hype” feels like small potatoes when you think of what Smith would create on In Colour, which turns 10 years old today. It took less than five years for the members of the xx to start a band, ink a record deal, and put out an album. But Smith, the sole producer of xx, had been at this for a long time already.
The story goes that when Smith was 10 years old, his uncle, a DJ, gifted him his first turntable and taught him how to mix pairs of records together. Smith was also a skateboarder growing up, and he liked discovering new music via skating clips, which in the UK were more often soundtracked by hip-hop and EDM than American punk rock. He went on to attend the arts-focused Elliott School, whose alumni included his future peers Burial and Four Tet, and he commenced a bit of a club rat phase -- though he was mostly just interested in sharing spaces with rising electronic stars like James Blake and Floating Points. Finally, Smith started DJing those clubs himself, and by the time the xx blew up, he was already well on his way to becoming an expert in his craft.
And so it was surprising, but not unearned when XL Recordings boss Richard Russell approached Smith and asked him to remix Gil Scott-Heron’s final album, 2010’s I’m New Here. Russell also produced I’m New Here, and had looked to the xx for inspiration in crafting the record’s lo-fi, subdued atmosphere. Smith’s remixed version, aptly titled We’re New Here, was credited to “Gil Scott-Heron and Jamie xx,” accentuating Smith’s crucial role in reworking the original album. And Smith didn't disappoint: He took Scott-Heron’s cover of Bobby Bland’s “I’ll Take Care Of You” from a scorned soul ballad into an ultra-sleek, tropical-house thumper. The remix album was released in February 2011, just three months shy of Scott-Heron’s death.
As the xx’s star continued to grow, Smith became more and more revered and in-demand. Among Smith’s ever-growing community of admirers was Noah “40” Shebib, who heard Smith's "I’ll Take Care Of You” remix and decided to sample it for Drake and Rihanna’s 2012 duet “Take Care.” (Incidentally, Rihanna had sampled the xx’s “Intro” for her song “Drunk On Love” the year prior, but that one never became a hit.) Between constant touring with the xx and repeatedly lending his beats and remixes to other artists, Smith had also accrued dozens of song seeds that had yet to see the light of day. Eager to put those good ideas to good use and flesh out those songs entirely, he figured: Why not make a solo album?
In Colour took years to make. Though he’d been sitting on numerous half-baked tracks for quite a while, Smith didn’t officially start working on his debut solo album until 2012, when the xx were on a world tour for their sophomore LP Coexist. He got homesick on the road, and so he collected little soundbites of things that reminded him of London: At least two documentaries about UK dance music, a snippet of dialogue from the Hackney-set crime drama Top Boy, a BBC Radio 1 show that never aired. But like any good DJ, he also used his travels as an opportunity to go record shopping; while crate-digging in Detroit, he bought a copy of the Persuasions’ 1971 album Street Corner Symphony, which featured the Sam Cooke-penned a capella song “Good Times.” That purchase would soon pay for itself.
Smith re-introduced himself in March 2014 with the release of In Colour’s lead single “Sleep Sound,” where a dreamy xylophonic jangle and shuffling beat simmer just under the surface. It wasn’t the sharp left turn we’d see on other In Colour songs, instead seamlessly bridging Smith’s work with the xx into his new role as a harbinger of dance. It was a long album rollout, and almost an entire year after “Sleep Sound,” Smith dropped two songs that would become modern EDM classics: “Gosh” and “Loud Places.” “Gosh,” an album opener for the ages, ditches pop song structure for unbelievably simple, steady percussion and heavy half-note pulses of bass. In lieu of lyrics, you occasionally hear a muffled “oh my gosh!” throughout; at first it feels foreboding, but as “Gosh” gradually swells, that anxiety slowly morphs into triumph, setting the tone for the technicolor trip to follow.
Smith wanted In Colour to be distinct from his work with the xx. He didn’t always succeed. Even amid his solo pursuits, he’s maintained strong creative partnerships and friendships with his bandmates, who make appearances multiple times across In Colour. (Though there was some alleged friendly bickering over the collaborative songs, because Madley Croft and Sim liked them so much they wanted to save them for a future xx record). Madley Croft’s feathery vocals take the lead on the twinkling synth-pop jam “SeeSaw,” about watching a wishy-washy partner move on to someone else. After the steel drum psychedelia of “Obvs” and the ambient wash of “Just Saying” comes a full xx reunion by way of the straight chiller “Stranger In A Room,” where Madley Croft lends her guitar to Sim’s drawls about getting blissfully lost on the dance floor. It’s a sound on which the xx would eventually expand with their comparatively bold 2017 album I See You. In the context of the dazzling In Colour, it falls relatively flat -- but I can’t think of many times where “this sounds like the xx” has been uttered pejoratively.
If the front half of In Colour feels like shaking off your socially-anxious nerves as you're warming up to the club, then its backside delights in the freedom of finally letting yourself free. That spiritual transition is best represented on “Loud Places,” Madley Croft’s final appearance and one of the album’s best moments. You hear some muffled crowd chatter as the song begins, giving way to Madley Croft’s lovelorn declarations: “I go to loud places to search for someone to be quiet with.” As the chorus kicks in, it becomes total euphoria, all memories of that aforementioned wishy-washy partner fading into the night.
Is there a feeling stronger than euphoria? If so, it comes next in “I Know There’s Gonna Be (Good Times),” which might be the best dance song of the 2010s. Where a subtle air of isolation imbues In Colour’s mellower moments, “I Know There’s Gonna Be (Good Times)” -- here’s that Persuasions sample -- demands conviviality, and it did so before it was even finished. “I don't feel like I'm very good at making music, in terms of like the technical side of it,” Smith told The Fader at the time. “It's more like trying stuff out until something that I love happens. Sometimes I'll be quite good at the first 10 seconds of a song, then I'm lost. ‘I Know There's Gonna Be (Good Times)’ was like that.”
And so Smith decided he needed to do something really different. During an extended stay in New York City, he frequently tuned in to the local hip-hop radio station Hot 97, absorbing American hits and taking note of which rappers he liked the best. For context, it was the heyday of Young Thug and Rich Homie Quan’s mixtape Rich Gang: Tha Tour Pt. 1, and dancehall star Popcaan was beginning to make major waves outside his home country of Jamaica.
Smith sent out a lot of feelers for guest contributors on “(Good Times)”; rumor has it there are a number of alternate takes, which Smith doesn’t seem very interested in releasing. Young Thug and Popcaan were two of the artists who wrote proposed verses for the song and sent Smith their takes. He liked them both equally, and it’s easy to see why: Popcaan’s breezy-cool Patois adds an entirely new dimension, while Thugger’s no-holds-barred glee on absurdist bars like “I’ma ride in that pussy like a stroller!” is straight-up contagious. Instead of choosing one or the other, Smith spliced their two versions together, the sonic result as lively and vivid as the good times its vocalists are spitting about. You can hardly see Smith’s face in this video, either, retreating to his natural position as the song’s unassuming, yet vital heartbeat.
In Colour was nominated for the 2015 Mercury Prize, a Brit Award, and Best Dance/Electronic Album at the Grammys. Stereogum -— and many of our peers -- named it one of the best albums of the year, while multiple other publications would go on to declare it one of the best albums of the decade. It did just as well commercially, charting in both the UK and US. It was a tough album to follow up, and so it took him nearly a decade to do so, returning last fall with In Waves, a perhaps more straightforward record replete with skull-rattling 808s and many, many more collaborations. Compared to In Colour, In Waves was more brash and confident, the sound of a DJ with a career much more established than the shy 20-something who made its predecessor. “Dance music is important to me because it just makes me happy,” Smith said in the Fader interview. “[In Colour] can be something that you listen to on your own if you want, but really it's something designed to make people happy, even if it's a sad song.” By that metric, the record passes with -- ahem -- flying colors. On the surface, In Colour is a love letter to music’s healing properties. But after peeling back a few layers, it also becomes a reminder that our friends are never as far away as we think -- they’re probably just waiting for us at the club.
