Jamie xx

I am, for the first time in my adult life, sitting on my own patio, typing on a computer, at my own actual patio table, not made out of cheap plastic.

As simple and NBD as that sounds, you don't understand, I hath never done such a thing thing. I never realized the pleasure until I spent the last three years of my life dreaming about doing exactly what the fuck I'm doing at this very second because I didn't know I was missing something until I was alerted to what I was missing by someone I trusted. I'm pretty fucking thankful right now.

This is how I found out about Jamie xx.

Yes, I have listened to The xx, and yes I am aware that Jamie xx is one of the x's in The xx. But like most other things, I just don't have (allow me to quote corporate America) "enough bandwidth" to know about Jamie xx's new album AND keep up on personal hygiene. But I pressed play on his latest album because I trusted the person who handed it to me, and I'm pretty fucking thankful I did.

I needed something to sound like this.

When music just starts to fucking bug you, when you find yourself listening to AM radio again, when you spend entire weeks listening to Frank Ocean and White Denim exclusively on repeat, when you've somehow managed to ignore 5 gigs of unexplored music because fuck music; you need a kick in the balls bruh.

I was successfully kicked in the balls at the 1:01 mark of the song "Loud Places". Oh fuck was I kicked in the balls. When that extra vocal bounces in on the chorus and you're raising the roof slightly higher than shoulder height and shaking your head side to side like you're watching a windshield wiper wipe the windshield, shiiiiiiiiiiiiit I needed that. The entire second half of this song is like a southern church service in slow motion, but on the streets of a major American city, and everyone is playing drums on metal bannisters and railings with equal length rods of plutonium. There's men and women wearing bleached white capri pants in equally as white laceless Keds without socks, they're all motioning with their hands in identical and complementary ways, and holy shit all of these people have amazingly perfect teeth. IS THIS A TARGET COMMERCIAL?

If this sounds even the least part random, wait until you hear this fucking album. In Colour is all the fuck over the fucking place, in probably the most welcome way imaginable. When one second you're dropping afterparty comedown tracks and the next you're flexing your steel drum chops in an all inclusive oceanside resort lobby and the next you're sentimentally scoring the TRON soundtrack with a skinny guy in a 5 o'clock shadow and a Members Only jacket singing into a lightbulb; shit is all sorts of all sorts of awesome.

As a guy who has absolutely no qualms about dropping an inappropriately sensual collection of dance moves or hand motions wherever I damn well please, I can admit to "The Rest Is Noise" and "Girl" having hyptbrotized me in ways I hadn't thought possible. "Sleep Sound" played for the first time in my headphones while I was slightly intoxicated after I had just put the kids to bed and I ended up nodding my head for about twenty minutes and I started that song over and over and over and over and over. And then there were snacks.

DEAR LORD THERE WERE SNACKS. #tebow

How this Jamie xx dude can bounce around rhythms in such an original fucking way is outside the realms of my understanding, and I went to Catholic school bro, I was face to face with the fantasy all da thyme.

If you were in a hurry and rushed through trying to fall in love with this album, I'm almost certain it wouldn't connect with that organ in your body that only responds to aural stimulation and that makes you just fucking fiend for SONGS bro. You aren't addicted to drugs or funyuns or gambling or local government bro, you're like me, you just need your ear holes penetrated by certain things as often as possible.

The musical appreciation drought that I was battling was fierce, it had me it its clutches for weeks bro. Hell, I was even listening to NFL draft day previews bro. The fuck is so wrong, that someone with so much to live for, is so gradually reduced to listening to people he doesn't know, reading off statistics and measurements of the skills of people he doesn't know either, playing a sport that no one in their right mind would play without a dangling carrot of a few million dollars?

I've been telling people that Jamie xx needed me more than I needed him, but I'm lying. Without In Colour I would still be listening to sports radio and clipping coupons, but now I'm staring off into space and playing dashboard drums and ignoring my responsibilities like I should've been doing all along.

Thanks Jamie xx. Call me bro. You can babysit.