If there’s one thing that Britain likes, it’s over-hyping their bands to the point of nausea. The XX, a four-piece consisting of 20-year-olds from London, is no exception, and they’ve received enthusiastic reviews from just about everyone who can give one. There are only two details that make this particularly strange: one is the fact that the XX is not a guitar band, the other is that they’re actually good. Over the course of its debut record, xx, the band uses skeletal production and arrangements, as well as fascinating vocal interplay, to explore negative space and texture.
Without the group’s singers: bassist Oliver Sim and guitarist Romy Madley Croft: this record would be nowhere near as good as it is. The two sport almost identical ranges yet have distinctly different voices, and the effects of hearing the two weave in and out, then overlap each other, is revelatory. There are almost no harmonies; the two only sing in unison when together and it’s fascinating amongst the album’s ice. “Crystalized” and “Islands” take almost all of their power from the effects of their vocal arrangements, and the chorus of “Islands,” where Croft sings “I am yours now / so I don’t ever have to leave” becomes something unstoppable when Sim joins her.
Just as unique as its singers are the album’s songs and their arrangements. The band cites their biggest influences as modern R&B records, Aaliyah, and the Cure, but it’s the most minimal pop to make a splash in years. The silence between notes gets heavier and heavier as the album progresses, and songs are rarely made out of more than a few sampled drums, skeletal guitar and bass lines and those vocal lines, which are given tons of room of stretch and expand. “Heart Skipped a Beat” comes in as soon as “Islands” ends, almost as if continuing the same set of ideas, running on a call and response between guitar, bass and a single pulsing kick. The middle of “Fantasy” gives way to a moment in which chest cavity-readjusting bass bursts forth, swallowing the song, and it doesn’t matter, because it works so well. When real, percussive grooves emerge, like on “Basic Space,” where one shows up a minute in, they stand out around so much emptiness that it’s hard not to be taken with it.
It’s hard to figure out how, exactly, a record like xx could come from such a young band. Despite the fact that their school’s alumni include Burial, members of Hot Chip and several others who’ve gone on to make waves in British electronic music this decade, there’s something unbelievable about the XX’s embrace of minimalism, love of musical conversation and ability to craft something truly unique out of the elements that make bedroom R&B. Whereas Junior Boys’ Last Exit was memorable because it married aggressive, difficult percussion to Jeremy Greenspan’s aching songwriting, the XX play up strange, sexualized conversation atop almost nothing at all, and to hear it at all, much less from four 20-year-olds with no public histories in music between them, is nothing short of astounding. Unlike the majority of British media hype, the XX absolutely deserves the attention.
