xx
On the first proper song from The xx’s debut album, guitarist/vocalist Romy Madley Croft sings to bassist/vocalist Oliver Sim, “You watch things on VCRs/ With me/ And talk about big love.” It could be that she’s role-playing a teenage infatuation, basking in nostalgia for that moment when a movie’s dull stretch was the perfect opportunity for a little bit of making out—which also happens to be the same moment when a giddy schoolgirl crush begins to slip into a whole world of adult problems. Over the course of xx, Croft and her foil tease out the details of a relationship from comfort to desperation to hope. In the middle of it Croft pleads, “Maybe I had said/ Something that was wrong/ Can I make it better/ With the lights turned off?” but, by the time “Stars” closes out the album, she has acquired a preternatural patience. She never inflates beyond a well-articulated monotone, but she’s not emotionally removed from the tumultuous love affair, either. Her voice a conduit as brittle and transparent as the crystals her lyrics continually reference.
Of course, relationship dramatics are nothing new, even when they’re as lush and tremulous as the one Croft and Sim depict. The emotional punch of xx comes from the sparseness of the band’s sound. On “VCR,” for example, a xylophone dots Croft’s memories. Elsewhere, a wiry bass riff signals Sim’s icy detachment. The electronic hand-claps on “Heart Skips a Beat” feel chosen for their symbolic value as much as the sound. In an age where it’s fashionable to make a two-man operation resonate like a stage packed with people, The xx make a four-person band feel like two—so much that seeing the band on Last Call With Carson Daly, and watching them play their instruments all at the same time, was something of a revelation. In order for xx to succeed, The xx had to get absolutely everything right. Every lick of musicianship on the album is allowed room to fail or succeed on its own merits, and the result is a conversation between two lovers where the communication occurs not only in their voices, but in those hand-claps, that xylophone, the bass riffs, and, most importantly, in the silences and echoes that travel between each of them. For The xx, love is a thing surrounded by empty space.
-Martin Brown, 2009
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