Artist: The xx
Album: xx
Year: 2009
Grade: 4.5 pretzels
The xx, a new band from London, are very mysterious. It’s quite difficult to track down any information about them, mostly due to their un-Google-able name (seriously, try typing “the xx” into Google. Watch what happens). They also have no official website, no Wikipedia page and only a barebones MySpace from which to promote their music. However, they also have the blogosphere and their name has been popping up all over the place recently. After listening to their debut album, xx, I can see why.
The xx aren’t doing anything particularly revolutionary here. Some pretty standard Brit-rock influences are mixed together (Joy Division, the Cure, etc, plus a bit of R&B here and there) and the end result isn’t too far off from the source material. However, what separates the xx from the rest of the slavering pack of post-punk rehashers is their extraordinary restraint and calm. The xx’s music is subtle and clear and so minimal it almost breezes by without you noticing. Most of their songs have little more than a thin guitar line, an equally simple bass part and a few drum breaks that come and go. Yet, despite being so simple, the xx’s songs end up being more memorable than virtually anything their peers have been cranking out for the past decade.
The xx aren’t doing anything particularly revolutionary here. Some pretty standard Brit-rock influences are mixed together (Joy Division, the Cure, etc, plus a bit of R&B here and there) and the end result isn’t too far off from the source material. However, what separates the xx from the rest of the slavering pack of post-punk rehashers is their extraordinary restraint and calm. The xx’s music is subtle and clear and so minimal it almost breezes by without you noticing. Most of their songs have little more than a thin guitar line, an equally simple bass part and a few drum breaks that come and go. Yet, despite being so simple, the xx’s songs end up being more memorable than virtually anything their peers have been cranking out for the past decade.
The vocals on xx are one of the band’s big selling points. Guitarist Romy Madley Croft and bassist Oliver Sim weave their voices around each other in strange, yet not altogether unpleasant ways. It’s a different take on the whole boy/girl duet thing, but it works and it gives the xx a unique edge. Croft’s yearning voice is balanced by Sim’s heavily accented drawl and both rarely sing above a musical whisper. Combined with the spectral music, the end result is more mysterious than dark, more romantic than sad.
The band themselves stumbled upon the perfect adjective for their music and named their first single after it: “Crystalised”. The xx’s music definitely has a very crystalline quality to it, glistening and beautiful but also very thin, transparent and cold. xx still suffers through a few classic debut album problems, with “Crystalised” and the ringing “Night Time” being the only true knockout tracks. However, as British guitar band debuts go, the xx have absolutely massacred most of their recent competition. Hopefully, they’ll keep up the good work and build upon the strengths they’ve shown with xx.
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