From a deeper place
London trio The xx have released their third – and best – album yet. Singer Oliver Sim talks about life, love, and being introverts in the spotlight with Grant Smithies.
It was lovely to listen to him on a bright Tuesday morning, the summer sun shining through the trees outside, casting the sort of dappled shade I always associate with English woodlands.
The singer with London trio The xx, Oliver Sim, has the sort of soft, breathy, slightly posh English voice that is, for no real reason you can put your finger on, oddly reassuring.
He sounds gentle, thoughtful, kind. He’s unfailingly polite, which is comforting in these strange days when boorish blowhards are more visible than ever, even ascending to the White House.
Sim, meanwhile, speaks softly and carefully. You imagine him coming to the door in a wellappointed London bedsit, immaculately dressed, inviting you in, apologising for the nonexistent mess, and offering you a cup of Earl Grey.
‘‘We tend to write about sadness more than anything else,’’ he says, cheerfully. Sim’s at home in London, pondering the fact that The xx are often accused of being relentlessly miserable.
‘‘Let’s just say that we don’t dwell on things that are going well. But sad songs don’t necessarily have to make you sad as a listener. Sad songs can make you feel connected, too, I think.’’
A new collection of sad songs has just been released, with a few happier ones in there this time, for good measure.
I See You is the third album Sim has made with former schoolmates Romy Madley-Croft and Jamie Smith, and it’s quite possibly the best: more emotionally diverse than their self-titled 2009 debut; less suffocatingly sparse than 2012 follow-up, Coexist.
It’s also getting a lot more scrutiny than previous recordings, due in part to Smith’s solo career under the name Jamie xx, a sideline that’s become his main focus, including high-profile work producing for Drake and Alicia Keys.
‘‘That’s true. And it was tough sometimes, making this new record, because Jamie wasn’t always as available as we wanted him to be. We’d be like, ‘Hey, remember us?’ After his solo record (2015’s In Colour) became
‘ We’re by no means your typical swaggering, arrogant, pop-star extroverts who love being on stage and in the public gaze, but even so, over the years, we’ve grown a lot in confidence.’ OLIVER SIM
so massive, he’s become this superstar DJ/producer, so Jamie has a lot of power in this industry now. If he wanted to, he could be an absolute dictator, but he’s not. Really, The xx is very democratic, and all three of our voices are heard very strongly. That’s the delight of being in a band with your best friends: they keep you grounded.’’
I See You is a more confident, purposeful record than the two previous albums, reckons Sim.
‘‘ Coexist was quite closed off and internal, and pretty selfconscious and insecure, I guess. It was the first album where we knew we had an audience, so we second guessed ourselves a lot and tried to give people an even more stripped-back version of what we’d done before. And with our first record, the whole thing was just happy mistakes. A lot of the things people complimented us for weren’t even intentional. We were praised for the sense of space and simplicity in the songs, but really, that just came from the fact that we were learning to play our instruments.’’
This time around, the trio decided to be less precious, more exploratory. ‘‘We’ve grown up a lot, and become better players and songwriters. And we’ve also realised that the thing that makes us sound like us is, ultimately, our personalities. That’s the DNA of the band. It doesn’t require so much thought.’’
True. Both singers have distinctive voices – understated and intimate – and playing styles: Sim’s droning basslines are spare and careful, while Madley-Croft peels out shimmering, gossamerthin guitar runs. And producer Jamie xx has certain sounds and song structures he likes to use, both with the band and in his solo work. When the three of them make music together, it’s immediately clear who you’re listening to.
‘‘Yeah, definitely. And his solo record helped inform this one. If he’d brought along that Hall and Oates sample from (lead single) On Hold, we would have thought it was inappropriate for The xx, but we’ve just tried to be more free with how we worked this time around. Working on his solo record with him helped with thatit was the first time the three of us had worked together without having to think, ‘does this music fit with things we’ve done before as The xx?’.’’
Sim is, bless him, very open when discussing the shortcomings of earlier records. A shy gay man still getting to know himself, he started writing songs with Romy, who’s also gay, when they were both 15. They had already been friends most of their lives: when they were nippers, Sim and Madley-Croft played in the same sandpit.
But songwriting was a tough new skill to learn. They were emotionally naive, and it showed. They murmured their lyrics, played quietly, buried themselves in reverb. They sounded almost apologetic to be expressing their messy feelings in front of strangers.
‘‘That first album was full of love songs by three teenagers who hadn’t had a ton of experience. We were just 16 when we started writing some of those songs, so a lot of them were about expectations.
‘‘We sang about our hopes and dreams of what it might be like when it came our turn to be in love.’’
Now, they’re all in their late 20s, and the songs flow out of lived experience.
‘‘Our songwriting is coming from a deeper place now. We have more stuff to write about, and not just in terms of romantic relationships, either. We’ve grown as individuals, and the friendship between the three of us has changed. There’s still heartbreak in there, but I think there’s also a lot more joy in our music now.’’
A lot more? Not really, no. Party music, this ain’t. The tempos might be faster, the chords a tad glossier, the vocals more forthright, the melodies leavened with earworm samples and updrafts of hopeful major chords, but for the most part, these are still songs concerned with loneliness, regret, vulnerability.
For every uptempo offering such as Dangerous or On Hold, there’s a torch song marinated in tears.
Brave For You sees Romy contemplating the death of her parents. A Violent Noise finds a sensitive homebody struggling to connect with a brash and clamorous outside world.
With its entreaties to ‘‘Test me, see if I break’’ and ‘‘take it out on me’’, Test Me feels borderline masochistic.
‘‘I’ve been a romantic for so long/ All I’ve ever had are love songs …’’ sings Romy on I Dare You, in which two nervous lovers challenge one another to stop overthinking their new relationship and just dive in deep.
‘‘We wrote and recorded that song in Reykavik in Iceland’’ says Sim. ‘‘We made quite a few trips over there, and also to Texas, New York, and LA, just to get out of the comfortable confines of London and see how that might shake our music up. For such a small place, Iceland has a really rich musical history, and while we were there we listened to a lot of local pop radio. As a result, we made that song, which is the poppiest thing we’ve ever done.’’
Elsewhere, familiar moods are revisited and refined. With its pained vocal and twangy guitar, album centrepiece Performance could have been something off their first album, the lyrics an update of The Impressions’ immortal ‘‘sad guy faking happy’’ ballad, Tracks Of My Tears.