A roller disco seemed within the comfort zone of newly minted dance diva Jessie Ware. Except this place is more like skate night at the school gym: a gray, concrete, sparsely filled pop-up in the middle of Brooklyn’s Atlantic Terminal Mall. And we don’t hear any actual disco — the DJ is spinning ’90s and aughts hip-hop for Throwback Thursday, which makes Ware, at 38, feel old. It’s been years since the singer’s Rollerblading days with her husband, and she’s admittedly out of practice. As we approach the rink, she trips forward and grabs my waist only to glide right past me; a few minutes later, she skates backwards like it’s nothing — up until her thighs give out. “Don’t make me go back out there,” she says, already unlacing her skates after 30 minutes.
Ware has become a master of getting bodies moving since turning her focus at the top of this decade from making soulful, confessional love songs to glistening party music. Her fourth album, What’s Your Pleasure? (2020), was a standout of the early-pandemic disco revival, in good company with Dua Lipa and her heroes Kylie Minogue and Róisín Murphy, one that conveyed the euphoria and sensuality of a night out. It led to the biggest successes of her career: her highest U.K. chart debut, her first Album of the Year nod at the BRIT Awards, a tour slot opening for Harry Styles.
For her latest effort, the loose and boisterous That! Feels Good!, Ware says she wasn’t pushed to make the same album twice. But, she adds, “I’m not stupid. I know what works.” The question became how to follow its path without retreading it. Ware found the answer in Pleasure closing track “Remember Where You Are.” Recorded late in the sessions for the album, it’s a swaying, mid-tempo anthem with strings and a choir that sounds like the first rays of sunshine at dawn. (It made Obama’s annual favorites list.) Now that her music could make people two-step, she started reaching for a more emotional connection, too. Ware was inspired by Prince, Talking Heads, and Fela Kuti; she envisioned her new dance songs for the stage first, leaving behind the polished, electronic studio sheen of Pleasure. (Though she still brought in dance music royalty Stuart Price, who has worked with Madonna, Minogue, and the Pet Shop Boys, to co-produce.) - Vulture, Review Of That! Feels Good!
