Three years on from the exceptional That! Feels Good!, and Jessie Ware has stepped that little bit further into dance-pop thrills. It feels like an expected shift for her latest album, Superbloom, but that makes it no less exciting. Continuing an exceptional run of form, Ware has pooled the tools of pop and disco to create one of the more exciting moments of her career. Banking on the success of her last album, testing the waters with a single here or there, Ware has played the long game by music industry turnaround standards. Superbloom is well worth the wait and yet part of the success is that tie to That! Feels Good!, an album that still feels like a contemporary powerhouse. We should expect nothing less from Ware. A whole sub-genre of music is evolving faster than most can keep up with it, and Ware is leading the charge once more. You can hear as much in the first notes of a prelude, a necessary build-up towards some of her very best work.
Superbloom has a flair and thrill that cement Ware as one of the all-time greats. Her album before this did so too, but it’s the upbeat charm and heavier message overlap of I Could Get Used to This that works so well for Ware, and as a result, her listeners. Get used to where Ware is. She is at the top and will reign there for some time. She knows as much and makes it clear on the staggering I Could Get Used to This, a fine blur of pop-adjacent imagery and a mature, deeper groove which goes on to profile the intensity she can so often bring to disco. There’s a wonderful funk and soul section to Superbloom that, much like the rest of the pop sound Ware is revitalising, we must not take for granted. The title track is solid work, overshadowed by the follow-up track Automatic. String sections galore, a cool bass addition too, it’s the swaggering style the genre had been crying out for. Few were willing to take it to that empowering high, but Ware has, for half a decade now, revolutionised this sound.
This is not as strong as That! Feels Good!, perhaps because it hasn’t found a catchier, consistent set of songs, but it’s still great work. Sauna exudes that righteous energy too, though once more it pales in comparison to the song that follows. Mr Valentine is a powerhouse in the making, once more reliant on those disco grooves, but what separates it from the rest of the album is the righteous rage at the core of it. All of the messaging, those empowering moments, it all depends on Ware’s voice. She has an outstanding range and it makes the difference in songs like Love You For, a track that strips back the instrumentals and puts Ware front and centre. It’s where she puts out some of her best offerings, and you can hear just how big a difference it makes when she’s the focus, rather than the instrumental structure. All those riffs and grooves are strong, though without the vocal range Ware provides on top of that, they’d feel more like an occasionally surprising jam.
A hell of a lot of fun is what Superbloom is. Ride has a fantastic understanding of what upbeat momentum can do for a genre. It’s not all doom and gloom, but there’s plenty of reflection within Superbloom. A few rogue choices too, the confident approach to some sleek tech-sounding synth on Don’t You Know Who I Am? is that blur between confidence and ego hard at work. Strip it all back for the melodic 16 Summers and that contrast is complete. Superbloom may present a confident, out there artist but there are glimmers of real truth to Ware found throughout. A consistent, quality piece of work from Ware should be no surprise, and yet there are moments of absolute wonder within Superbloom.
