On “My World,” Jam City sounds like a project reborn. The opener of Jack Latham’s new LP is sprightly and lithe, like a Boz Scaggs song stripped bare and then left out in the sun for a while. The keyboards amble around the stereo field as each swoop of the bassline lugs the track forward. The whole instrumental seems to bend and curl around the three vocalists—Aidan, Bawo, and Ox Eye—who release a barrage of hooks: sung, rapped, and deadpanned. “My World” is a three-way pop song that has the clammy cool of Kelela’s “Frontline” (also produced by Latham) and the casual genius of Jai Paul’s “Jasmine,” speaking in musical fragments rather than full sentences: “Get up/Back from the dead like ‘Thriller’/Big fat killer/The lights get dimmer.” It’s nonsense, but it’s also a little exciting, as a voice coos, “I just wanna get fucked up/I just wanna get with you,” the sound of a drunken night out when you’re cycling rapid-fire through emotions. “My World” is a marvel of club-pop engineering on a level that Latham hasn’t reached in a while, a high that he spends the rest of the album almost reaching. It’s a soft-touch record where the pregame, nightclub, and comedown mix and mingle into a feel-good fuzz.
He wasn’t always this way. Latham left an indelible mark on UK dance music in 2012 with his debut album, Classical Curves, turning camera flashes and the squeak of basketball sneakers into dance music that melted Philly club and instrumental grime into one indestructible alloy. But Latham has spent the rest of his years wandering the hinterlands of pop music, as if he got bored of being miles ahead of everyone else. This new phase started with co-production for Kelela and bloomed with Latham’s awkward but hopeful Dream a Garden LP, where guitars and his own reedy voice took centre stage. He’s revisited dance music on and off since then, tracking his journey with the excellent Earthly mixes, but he sounds most at home when he’s working around a vocalist, and his fuzzy guitar playing and soft-edged synths have something to give them shape.
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