The Daily Spin, June 17

Jamie xx | In Colour

Welcome back to the Daily Spin, the series in which I review 365 albums during 2023. 

Each album will be given a rating on a scale from 0 to 10. You can look at the entire set here. Additionally, you can check out a list of my favorite song from each album right here.

If you want to suggest an album, good news! You can do so right here!

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Album: In Colour (2015)

Artist: Jamie xx

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Music is special to me. 

When I need to close myself off from the world, it’s music that’s most frequently my escape. Music has provided me with lifelong friends, hours of conversations with people I’d’ve never met otherwise. Music is the opening and the close, the soundtrack to my life, a constant in ways that few things will ever be capable of being. I know that I can turn to the same records and songs that have backed so much of my life and feel the same unwavering emotions that power through me as though it’s the first time I’m hearing them.

In a year that has been tougher than most on a personal level, I’ve found myself seeking out that comfort more than ever, and it’s no surprise that I’ve come back to this album, the debut full-length effort from Jamie Smith - alias Jamie xx, producer for the xx and an incredible talent in his own right. This album’s legacy for me personally is bigger than that, though, and I’d be remiss to fail to discuss the full impact it has had on my life, so I’ve chosen to examine the album in three segments, each four years apart.

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It’s 2015. I’m 18 years old. I’ve just gone out to Pepperdine as a freshman, two thousand miles and a world apart from everything I’ve ever known. I’m scared, I’m anxious, and above it all, I’m lonely as all hell. It’s hard being an introvert in an extrovert’s paradise, and I’m feeling that more than ever, so I turn to ‘Loud Places’, a song that takes xx bandmate Romy and a sample of ‘Could Heaven Ever Be Like This’, pivoting the two into a brutally emotive combination over a simple keyboard loop, raw percussive clinking over a steady heartbeat of a drum. 

At the time, I don’t really resonate so much with the element of lost love, but the lyrics still pull at my heartstrings, a sense of moving on and moving forward, having lost those people that were my rocks throughout so much of my life in a sense of immediacy. 

It was a small comfort, the way that the song exploded in the chorus, a ballroom of fragmented glass casting flickers of light upon me, gentle reminders that I’d be able to reach those heights, a brief respite of quiet in a world that felt so very overwhelmingly loud.  

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It’s 2019. I’m graduating college. The job search has, at this point, been largely unfruitful, and I’m starting to slip into some less-than-awesome places mentally. I take a break to go drive with my brother from Malibu back to our home in the Twin Cities, a trip that’ll take us three days, stopping in Salt Lake and Rapid City. It’s a chance to see some of the country I haven’t yet been to, and it’s a much-needed, if brief, respite from my LinkedIn messages. 

John and I get along well, though - we’re brothers, tight as can be, and though distance has drawn us apart, we still fall into the easy repertoire that puts my mind at ease. Of course, over thirty hours of driving, we’re not gonna talk the whole way, so we decide to put on albums we really like, trading off song selections, shooting the shit, letting the summer sun and the Bluetooth in the Hyundai Accent we’re driving toil away as we slowly make our way from California through Nevada into Utah.

It’s here, as the sun begins to set over the Sierra Nevadas, that I put on this album, but it’s one track in particular that stands out - ‘Good Times’, the rollicking three-way anthem featuring Popcaan and Young Thug. Trading profane couplets over a sixties-ish sample and the steel drums that have become somewhat of a staple in Smith’s music, Thug and Popcaan cultivate an impeccable vibe, the sort of music that undeniably lifts your spirits. It’s by no means the smartest song on the block, but the wordplay is snappy, the beats electric, and when it all comes golden, there’s a very real moment where all of the anxiety and stress falls away, if only for a moment, and I’m able to lose myself in the absurdity, reminded that good times are on the horizon - eventually.

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It’s 2023. Things have changed a lot. I fell in love, moved to Texas to pursue said love as the world was shutting down around us, weathered a global pandemic, got a cat and a dog, grew the hair out, cut the hair back, began my career in earnest, moved together, lost that love, and now here I am, preparing for a move back to Minnesota to live with some very dear friends. I’ve grown. I’m not who I used to be - hopefully for the better, but either way, it’s not a change I can go back from. It’s weird, sitting here, listening to this album again, as I’ve come to do in times of melancholy and joy alike, because as much as I’ve changed, it doesn’t really feel like the music has - sure, songs have different meanings now, but it’s still the same framework under it all. I still have all those same memories.

Both ‘Loud Places’ and ‘Good Times’ have more somber meanings for me now. I catch myself wondering about the heights we could have achieved together, the same way I find myself looking into the future and pondering who I’ll find those great joys in life with, wondering who might be her person as well. ‘Good Times’ still cuts at that anxiety, but it’s tinged with the sort of bittersweet feeling that comes with getting older and realizing that nothing gold can last forever, that these moments are finite above all else. 

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Other songs have grown to join these two tracks - album opener ‘Gosh’ is the sort of industrially raw production that screams to me, towering bass, scraping synths and percussion, and a keyboard solo that takes a moment to gain its footing, stumbling and wobbling as it ascends into absolute ecstasy. ‘Girl’, the closer, hits harder than just about any track on the album, that simple refrain of “I want your love/I want your love/I want your love/Give ME your love” a reminder of all the things I’ve had before and so many things that could have been. It’s brutal, quicksand for my heart, but it’s also beautiful, the sort of sonic explosion that ties together every other facet of the album. It sparkles as ‘Loud Places’ does, it glimmers and shines as only ‘Good Times’ can, it grates and grinds like ‘Gosh’ and ‘Hold Tight’.

With each passing minute, the album adds dimension, adds a new splash, a hue that gives another feeling name, another note that can draw from lived experience to paint a glorious picture by the end of it. Some of it’s quiet, the sort of finishing touches that give it that extra element of humanity, while others are loud, giant slashes across canvas, violent in expression regardless of the feeling behind it.

Music is special to me, and nothing is as special as this album, an explosion of color that allows the rest of the world to fall away, a reminder that truly, the rest is just noise. 

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Rating: 10/10

Best Tracks: Loud Places; Gosh; Girl; I Know There’s Gonna Be (Good Times)

Worst Tracks: n/a