XX
Album | The xx
Sex and longing and sweet sweet angst.
For a debut album, XX is a remarkably restrained affair. While so many bands seek to fill every empty space and often hide weak songwriting under layers of studio trickery, The xx seem obsessed with removing any and all extraneous elements. Simple, programmed beats, elegant guitar lines and hushed boy/girl vocals have little to compete with other than slight reverb and moments of silence. Songs like "Shelter" and "Islands" are almost deceptively simple on first listen -- all snaking Cure-like guitar lines and echo-chamber vocalizing -- but XX is a grower, and it owes more to classic R&B than old new wave (as evidenced by the group's haunted house take on Aaliyah's "Hot Like Fire"). Leave it to a bunch of sullen Brits, just barely out of their teens, to reinvent the pop wheel. Even a song about watching moves on an old VCR becomes a loaded, sexually charged affair. Sometimes less is absolutely more.
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