INTROVERT BAND EMERGES FROM ITS SHELL
U.K. trio’s new album sounds bigger and more danceable heading into Echo Beach shows
The xx crept onto the global pop radar in 2009 despite trading in the very definition of “headphone music,” selling nearly a million copies worldwide of an eponymous debut album so introverted and intimate it often made you feel like you were intruding on a private late-night conversation between lovers.
If the Mercury Prize-winning xx didn’t sound like it would make for much of a rock show, well . . . it didn’t, in the beginning. But while the band went even further inward musically on 2012’s breathtaking Coexist, the London trio started emerging from its shell onstage, gaining more swagger with each pass through Toronto — a pre-release gig at the Phoenix, a poised performance at Massey Hall that October and an epic, laser-lit encore in torrential rain and fog at Echo Beach in June 2013 — and adding ever more boom and ballast to its skeletal, oddly groovy neo-New Wave arrangements.
You can hear the influence of all that touring on this year’s typically excellent I See You, which captures Oliver Sim, Romy Madley Croft and Jamie “Jamie xx” Smith — who spent the time between the last two records earning a reputation as a world-class DJ/producer/beat-maker and releasing the acclaimed 2016 solo album In Colour — in their most maximalist mood yet. It’s not sunshine and lollipops, no, but you might occasionally find yourself dancing to it. Bodes well for the band’s two Toronto gigs at Echo Beach this Monday, May 22 and Tuesday, May 23.
The Star spoke to the soft-spoken twosome of Smith and singer/guitarist Madley Croft about their growing comfort with being a rock band when they were last in town doing promo for I See You. It looked like you guys got a lot of mileage out of the last album — you played here three times — so did you take any time off at all before getting going on the new one?
Romy Madley Croft: It would have seemed like we could have done, but we ended up finishing the tour in November of 2013 and we were writing pretty much straight away, which was encouraging. I think we were just inspired. We definitely got a lot of mileage, like you said, out of Coexist. I thought you guys really came into your own on bigger stages as that tour went on.
Jamie Smith: It definitely got to the point where we all enjoyed it because we could do it. Without thinking, really. We could just fully enjoy the experience, which is something that we never expected to have in the early days. I guess that just comes with doing it, right?
RMC: In the beginning, we definitely didn’t look like we wanted to be there, or didn’t really want to be there . . . we just did it. We played live. There was no question that we
wouldn’t, but it did take a long, long time to feel comfortable onstage . . . Oliver started moving, I started moving.
It was like a contagious thing. We all inspired each other, I guess, and the confidence grew. It’s come a long way from not being able to look anyone in the eye. Did all that touring influence the sound of the new album? It’s audibly
bigger and fuller.
JS: Well, I think you can hear it in Romy and Oliver’s voices, just how much better they’ve got at singing. And they’ve both got much better at playing their instruments, as well.
They just sound more, like, loud and full, which meant that they — that we — could go further with the songwriting. Did you have an idea you wanted to go that way on I See You, then?
RMC: We didn’t sit down and have, like, a group meeting about it, really. But on the songwriting side I really wanted to write really good songs, write songs that had great melody and depth and stuff.
And in terms of the production, Oliver and I started making our own demos a bit more to sort of provide Jamie with some more fully formed stuff . . . then I realized after we talked to Jamie that the demos Oliver and I were creating were at quite a high tempo. It must be irritating that people bring up the xx’s “shyness” in every single piece written about the band. Are you trying to abandon that?
RMC: I think that’s something we’d like to achieve with this album, just change the perception of us that we’re just “moody” and “in the dark.” We’re not that serious and intense.
It feels like the right time. We’re definitely not forcing it on ourselves. It’s just kind of happened.