Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD), Cassette
On Water Made Us, the latest album from Chicago-born singer, songwriter, and poet, Jamila Woods dissects, celebrates, and vents about the thrilling highs and gut-wrenching lows of romantic love. The album’s title comes from the raw, resolute “Good News,” in which Woods finds a faint kernel of hope by taking a bird’s eye view of a strained relationship and realizing that if she and her partner found happiness once, they might be able to find it again. She compares love to water—a fluid, generative substance which, by its very nature, can move, change, and eventually return back to its source: “The good news is we were happy once/ The good news is water always runs back where it came from/ The good news is water made us.”
But before we get to love’s return, Woods takes us back to the time before the relationship reached its breaking point with album opener “Bugs.” Backed by lush bass, strings, harp, and keyboard, Woods playfully details her partner’s tics and minor annoyances. Recognizing that she ain’t perfect herself, she asks her partner to “please be patient with me.” The song is an almost too-accurate depiction of the kind of lived-in intimacy that has the power to either forge lifelong bonds or cause a long-term relationship to sink under the weight of resentment. From here, Woods walks us through the many cycles and particularities of love. “Tiny Garden,” featuring duendita, is a groovy, mid-tempo bop that posits love as an ongoing process of care, support, and enrichment. Before the vocal harmonies swoop in for the song’s lovely chorus, Woods assures her partner that while her love may not be dramatic and overly demonstrative, it will be nourishing and consistent. “It’s not gonna be a big production,” she sings, “It’s not butterflies or fireworks/ Said it’s gonna be a tiny garden, but I feed it every day.”
All the joy, warmth, hurt, and even the mundanity that comes with love and connection turn up in songs like “Wolfsheep,” “Boomerang,” and “Headfirst.” By the time we get “Wreckage Room,” things have gone off the rails, and Woods employs the song’s spare, lonesome sound to mourn a love that couldn’t be rescued. Water Made Us is an emotionally harrowing journey, a reminder that love requires openness and surrender. Sometimes, love can feel like riding raging waters; other times, it’s like being swept out into the warmth of the ocean. Most times, it’s both at once.
