BURST(EMI)
The podcaster’s third sequin-festooned album in a row is her most retro, with its slightly cringe moments balanced by unerring quality control and opulent arrangements
Recent episodes of Table Manners, the podcast Jessie Ware co-hosts with her mother, Lennie, have begun with a brief advert for Ware’s new album: listeners, it advises, can get 10% off by preordering Superbloom using a special code. The fact that the advert is directing traffic from Ware’s podcast to her music feels slightly telling. As side hustles go, Table Manners has proved extraordinarily successful, attracting A-list guests: Margot Robbie, Jeremy Allen White, Paul McCartney, Robert De Niro. Indeed, it’s proved so successful that it scarcely seems like a side hustle at all: in 2026, Ware is probably better known as a podcaster than a singer. Hats off to her: in an uncertain era, when rock and pop artists are well advised to have a backup plan, there’s something hugely impressive about how big Ware’s has become. Still, there lurks the danger of her music seeming an afterthought: like the 10% off ad, something to get out of the way before the more serious business of enjoying banana bread with Lisa Kudrow.
You can hear the impact of Table Manners on Superbloom in a literal sense: a track called Automatic features a deep-voiced spoken-word appearance from Euphoria star Colman Domingo, previously a guest on the podcast. It’s also an album marked by a sense of doubling down. Ware’s third album in a row to mine a disco-pop hybrid, it’s also the most straightforwardly retro of the trio, sanding away the sheen of futuristic electronica found on 2020’s What’s Your Pleasure? and 2023’s That! Feels Good! in favour of lush orchestration: even the most synth-heavy tracks here speak less of the present than they do the early 80s post-disco boogie genre.
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