Jessie Ware

Jessie Ware “was in need of a rebirth,” said Ryan Leas in Stereogum.com. After 2017’s ballad-heavy Glasshouse, the London native “found her voice again” with a string of dance floor–ready singles that have culminated in this 12-song set of “bulletproof” disco-inspired jams. The 35-year-old singer-songwriter got her start as a featured vocalist on other artists’ dance tracks, and returning to that mode feels right. “While there’s still a sophisticated swoon to these songs holding them back from becoming too big or bombastic,” the album also plays, simply, as “banger after banger.” For fans of Table Manners, the podcast that Ware co-hosts with her mother, the album won’t feel like a departure, said Owen Myers at Pitchfork .com. She brings a camp sense of humor to channeling disco’s frivolity even as she leans into the era’s promises of rapture on and off the dance floor. Embracing that spirit has galvanized her. “She sounds bolder, looser—and frankly, more fun— than she has in a near-decade.”