Copies of Jessie Ware’s sixth album, Superbloom, ought to come with a beaded curtain to complete the sensual sense of slipping into a late Seventies/early Eighties nightclub. Because this is a record that builds on the retro disco of 2020’s What’s Your Pleasure? and 2023’s That! Feels Good! with layers of flirty flute, boogie-ready bongos and bass, strobing synth lines, dramatic strings and chiffon vocals. “I wanna whisper something naughty, take my clothes off in the party,” teases the 41-year-old Londoner over the Giorgio Moroder-endebted throb of “Sauna”. The confident, deeply rooted soul in her vocal is balanced by the abandoned euphoria of a woman away with the glitter ball fairies, like the 21st century’s answer to Donna Summer.
As fans of her Table Manners podcast will know, Ware has developed a real confidence and embraced her sense of fun since the Sade-nodding, soul sadgirl days of her Mercury-nominated 2012 debut, Devotion. Now a mother of three, accustomed to seating A-list guests (including Paul McCartney, Cher, Reese Witherspoon, Margot Robbie, Louis Theroux, Kylie Minogue and Yotam Ottolenghi) around her podcaster’s dinner table to share her mother’s home cooking, the former journalist and backing singer is strutting into her diva era.
