About

— The Analog Vault // Essential Listening —

The debut album of English electronic outfit The xx was an era-defining touchstone, helping shape everything from indie pop to underground electronic music in the decade to come. Released in 2009 via Young Turks, xx was entirely distinct from the late-aughts musical landscape. The album’s brooding sound was minimalist yet also multifarious - stripping down the group’s 90s R&B influences and drenching them in the dark, spacious palettes of trip hop, post-punk and dubstep.

Built around haunting duets between Romy Madley Croft and Oliver Sim, whose push-pull vocal interplay conveyed parallel narratives of loss and desire, and backdropped by Jamie Smith’s (Jamie xx) atmospheric, nocturnal production - The xx’s moody sophistication and intimate ambiance unfurls as a gorgeous revelation. This is an album of understated pleasures that will overcome the listener at every turn. — The Analog Vault
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The XX, four young, sullen-faced youths dressed in black, have that alluring band-as-a-gang aura about them. They spent their youth at south-west London's Elliott School (fellow alumni: Four Tet, Burial and Hot Chip) obsessively tinkering with instruments in the music room before signing a deal and self-producing their album in their record company's back office.

At first glance, you'd expect them to make basement rock'n'roll songs serrated with guitar feedback, but they're more interesting than that. For starters, they're fronted by a boy/girl combo - Romy Madley Croft (guitar) and Oliver Sim (bass) - whose interplay lends their debut an intimate tension. Along with bandmates Baria Qureshi (keyboards/guitar) and Jamie Smith (programming/samples), Croft and Sim craft languid, sparsely arranged love songs that recall atmospheric 80s acts such as the Cocteau Twins and Mazzy Star. Better still, they betray their south London roots: gentle, plaintive melodies are framed by minimal beats that nod to dubstep and R&B. On paper, it's a mongrel mix.

As the languorous swirl of "Intro" fades in, however, you immediately sense you're listening to something seductively special. When Croft and Sim start singing, on "VCR", they come across as being in an advanced state of fatigue. Standout tracks such as "Crystalised", with its off-key riff, possess a very modern sense of anxious turmoil, while "Shelter" mixes spare, dolorous guitar lines with a restless chorus. It's an album to play when you're wallowing in a comedown and slow-paced melancholy offers a strange comfort.

There is a lightness of touch at play that gives the XX a sophistication beyond their years. It probably means that their dream pop will become the ubiquitous dinner party album du jour. But really, their panicky atmospherics are too strange for that. This is uneasy listening to soundtrack the gentle gnashing of teeth. — (via The Guardian)

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Label: Young
Format: Vinyl, LP, Reissue
Country: Australia & New Zealand
Reissued: 2022 / Original Release: 2009
Genre: Electronic, Rock
Style: Indie Rock

File under: Alternative / Indie / Pop
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