Album of the Week: Rudimental We The Generation

After a week as overflowing with great new releases as last week, it's inevitable to feel let down by just a few good releases. As much of a drag as they can be, these down weeks are actually pretty important. If we were just under a constant barrage of top notch releases, we wouldn't appreciate them – it would become the norm. And we can't have that.

While there is nothing exactly thrilling out this week, creating a reliably enjoyable and solid album is not nothing, and that's exactly what Rudimental have done with their sophomore album, We The Generation.

The album follows the same pattern established by their excellent debut, Home. It's the same sound and vibe that you can hear coming from Disclosure, and Avicii (who also has a new album out this week, it's worth noting). What is the most interesting about We The Generation doesn't rely on most of the big names that the aforementioned bring in. For Americans, Ed Sheeran is the biggest name on the vocalists list, though Bobby Womack should be familiar to listeners who love great soul music.

Rudimental group members Piers Agget, Amir Amor, Kesi Dryden and DJ Locksmith (Leon Rolle) don't spend too much time on creating some massive single you're going to hear all over the radio. Instead the work they do on We The Generation is geared to creating a unified sound. That sound is a kind of soul-drenched EDM that is more for the ride home from the club, than hitting the dance floor. It sounds even better as the soundtrack to a party with just a few friends.

The best vocalists are Will Heard, who can do a damn convincing John Legend warble when he wants to, and Anne-Marie, who sounds amazingly like Amy Winehouse.

I doubt We The Generation is going to be anyone's favorite EDM this year, and it won't exactly live in your head after a few listens. But what it does, beautifully I might add, is carry you along on its pleasant tones. That Rudimental made an album that gets you from point A to B in a perfectly enjoyable way – well, I know plenty of artists who can't make the same claim.

We The Generation is out on Atlantic.  

Also recommended this week:

Autre Ne Veut's freak soul manifesto, the Age of Transparency.

Avicii's soul-infused sophomore album, Stories.

Joe Bonamassa live album and concert film, Live at Radio City Hall.

The Wood Brothers' bluegrass-folk medley, Paradise.

Album of the Week: Jamie xx In Colour

It is tricky to write about something when you're not fluent in the vocabulary of the subject you're writing about. When I wrote about Dwight Yoakam's great new album the other month, I detailed my growing appreciation for country music, which was relatively easy to do, because I know the vocabulary of country music. I (for the most part) am familiar with the important eras, artists and the instruments they use in that genre.

It's a little trickier for me this time around, with Jamie xx's glorious debut solo album, In Colour, because I don't know a whole hell of a lot about electronic music. I've been a casual fan for a handful of years, and I know Daft Punk (thanks to Kanye West) and LCD Soundsystem, as well as a few modern artists like Avicii and Porter Robinson, but I certainly can't write with any authority on the genre's history. Which is a shame, because there have been some really well-written pieces on In Colour, pieces that cover the many references and throwbacks Jamie makes to the early days of English techno throughout the album.

However, you don't have to be any kind of electronic music expert to appreciate how incredibly beautiful In Colour is in every way, from the album art and production to samples and recording. It just sounds marvelous. Especially at night. In your car. Or at home. Anywhere, really.

Jamie is one third of The xx, a fantastic electronic-pop group out of England that really blew up a few years ago. They're working on their third album currently, and I'll be interested to see how In Colour informs that album. This album still sounds a lot like The xx, particularly since bandmates Romy Madley Croft and Oliver Sim both show up on a song or two. Croft's voice is still a fucking stunner, particularly when she coos, "I go to loud places/to search for someone/to be quiet with/who will take me home," on "Loud Places." Her delivery comes off like a whisper, but the way Jamie builds her voice up through backing vocals and some seriously gorgeous guitar lines makes the lyrics hit you in the sweetest possible way.

I dig electronic that is a bit more chill – stuff that you can dance to if you really wanted, but is more for swaying. And while I am by no means saying In Colour is a somber album, I'd characterize it more as subdued. Jack Ü this isn't, but there are some great builds and beats for those who are fans – see "Hold Tight" and "Just Saying," to get a sense of what I mean.

I mentioned it above, but I really have to dive in a little more on the recording and production, which is just luminous. Every instrument, beat, sample and vocal sounds like they were recorded on the highest quality equipment imaginable. The clarity improves every facet of the album's sounds. I have no idea how Jamie managed it, but I have a hard time believing there will be an album this year that will just sound anywhere as good as this.

In Colour is very much a cohesive album, in the spirit of electronic music, and flows together seamlessly. I've heard (and made) all kinds of jokes about the electronic music that gets played in the club and how it all sounds like one song, but Jamie provides a through-line that unites everything, while allowing each track to have its own spirit and sound.

The highlight of the album (and now my leading contender for song of the year) is "I KnowThere's Gonna Be (Good Times)" an absolute stunner of soul, electronic, reggae and hip-hop that completely burrows into your mind and stays there. It features Young Thug and Popcaan – two of the most exciting voices in hip hop and reggae, respectively - and they just go in over a Persuasions sample. Thug is back on his silly rap shit, and he's untouchable when he's in the zone, even when he's delivering batshit crazy lines like, "I'ma ride in that pussy like a stroller/I'll survive in a mothafuckin' gutter." I have no idea what that first line even means, but he makes me grin like an idiot every time. You can see why hip-hop artists like Drake tap Jamie for producing when they can – the guy can deliver on the hooks like nobody's business. I fully expect to listen to "Good Times" almost incessantly this summer, and I know I won't be the only one.

It's reductive and dismissive to say In Colour is an electronic album for those who don't like (or don't know) they like that music – instead, it's an album open to all, with plenty to dig through for purists and appreciators alike. It gives listeners a thrilling chance to see the world through one captivating artist's eyes – in brilliant color.

In Colour is out on Young Turks.

Album of the Week: Shamir Ratchet

Las Vegas has long been a musical focal point for a weird amalgamation of artists. It had the lounge singers in the vein of the Rat Pack who really put the place on the map, then it went through a sort-of rock phase thanks to Elvis, and in the decades since it has become a residence for pop stars who want to spend months at a time performing for tourists (I'm looking at you Celine and Britney). Vegas has always been a town almost entirely driven by its nightlife (it seems to me anyway, a guy who has been there once when he was a kid) – the famous lights, the crowds on the strip, and the smoke-filled clubs with a lone crooner singing to guys down on their luck.

Earlier this year, Mark Ronson released Uptown Special, a perfect soundtrack for a Vegas night, chock-full of songs to get you on your feet and moving. It's an album with an undeniable anthem ("UptownFunk"), but quieter numbers like "Crack in the Pearl" shine for going a little under the sheen. Still, it's an album for the crowds – the people clogging up the tourist traps and causing the bathroom lines to stretch outside the club. Shamir Bailey's debut album Ratchet is something else entirely – it's an album to get you on your feet and moving as well, but it's for the natives of Vegas, for the travelers in the night. The people who see the tourist shit every day of their lives and have no interest in the glitz – they want something real. They go to all the places the rest of us will never know about, with people we'll never meet. They all know, as Shamir tells us, that Vegas is really only okay at night.

The first thing that stands about Shamir is his voice – a quicksilver, androgynous instrument that he is capable of brandishing with a cocksure wit, or quietly deploy to damn near break your heart. It's a once-in-a-generation voice, and I'm so pleased we live in a musical point in time where he can share it with us.

The uniqueness of Shamir's voice might be the marquee feature of his music, but that should in no way overshadow how skilled he is at taking electronic, pop and disco and tossing them into his bubbling creativity cauldron to create his own sound. His music is going to remind everyone of someone (depending on your musical tastes) but it's never in a ripped-off way. There are very few artists who could create a sound this specific to them as Shamir does on Ratchet. The group this album most reminds me of is the best electronic group of this century (full stop), LCD Soundsystem, particularly given Shamir's ability to build an extraordinarily catchy-beat out of simple tools, with just the perfect build-up of flourishes. We haven't heard this kind of skill out of the gate since James Murphy and Co.'s debut a decade ago.

Take songs like "Make A Scene" and "On the Regular," which manage to captures Shamir's knack for building a beat in the most infectious way possible. Both songs hearken back to LCD's "Drunk Girls" or "Pow Pow," not only in their sonics, but in Shamir's lyrics, which are brimming over with a jester's wisdom and barbed sense of humor. When he advises "Just can't make a thought a wife,/no more basic or ratchet guys./Listen up, I'm saving you/from all the hell that you'll go through" at the end of "Call It Off," it's with the exasperated smile of someone who knows.

If there's any justice in the world, "In For the Kill" will become a contender for song of the summer, in addition to becoming a club mainstay. It features an undeniably brilliant use of a horn riff, and just gets catchier from there. I bet it is dynamite live.

As great as Shamir is at getting you on your feet, his hardest hitting songs are the ones where he slows down. "Demon" is a wonderful number about being stuck in a relationship that hurts both parties, yet seems inescapable. It might just be Rachet's "Someone Great," as Shamir's voice glides over a lovely organ-driven beat, and his voice takes on a hint of despair as he delivers some of his prettiest lyrics.

The real stunner here is "Darker," which manages to sound like – I kid you not – a sunrise over the Vegas skyline. It is simply gorgeous, seeped in the night's atmosphere, and Shamir's voice is the beams of the sun – light, airy and utterly piercing. "You know it doesn't get darker/Unless you expected to," he calls out with the wisdom of one who has watched his fair share of sunrises banish the night, and it's utterly sublime.

Album closer "Head in the Clouds," is a personal motto, album thesis and fuck you to anyone trying to stop him all rolled into one, and ably shows there is nowhere Shamir can't go. "Got nothing left to lose,/Just want to make my next move," he sings. Bet on Shamir - he can't lose.

Ratchet is out on XL Recordings.