Xx (The xx album)

''xx'' is the debut album by the English indie pop band the xx. It was released on 14 August 2009 by Young Turks, an imprint label of XL Recordings, and recorded from December 2008 to February 2009 at the label's in-house studio in London. Producing the album, Jamie Smith of the xx created electronic beats for the songs on his laptop and mixed them in a detailed process with the audio engineer Rodaidh McDonald, who attempted to reproduce the intimate, unembellished quality of the band's original demos.

Along with the xx's early R&B influences, the album has drawn comparisons from journalists to alternative rock, electronica and post-punk sounds. Its largely melancholic songs feature minimalist arrangements built around Smith's beats and instrumental parts recorded by the other members of the band, including Oliver Sim's basslines and sparse guitar figures by Baria Qureshi and Romy Madley Croft, who employs reverb in her lead guitar playing. Most of the songs are sung as low-key duets by Croft and Sim, both of whom had written emotional lyrics about love, intimacy, loss and desire.

Released to widespread acclaim, ''xx'' was named one of 2009's best records and received praise for the band's atmospheric style of indie rock and pop as well as the interpersonal dimension of the performances. Commercially, it performed steadily over its first few years of release, becoming a sleeper hit in the United Kingdom and the United States, and eventually sold one million copies. Although major media outlets had largely ignored the band at first, and none of its singles became hits, ''xx'' received greater exposure from the licensing of its songs to television programmes and the band's Mercury Prize win for the album in 2010.

Shortly after the album's release, and with differences between Qureshi and the rest of the group leading to her dismissal, the xx continued to play as a trio on a protracted concert tour that helped increase their fanbase, reputation in the press and confidence as performers. ''xx'' proved highly influential in subsequent years, as its distinctive stylistic elements were incorporated by many indie bands and top-selling pop acts. One of the most acclaimed records of its era, it has appeared on top album lists published by ''NME'', ''Rolling Stone'' and ''The Guardian''.

Background

While students at South London's Elliott School in 2005, childhood friends Romy Madley Croft and Oliver Sim formed the xx with Jamie Smith and Baria Qureshi. Croft and Sim played guitar and bass, respectively, and dueted as the band's vocalists, while Smith programmed electronic beats for their songs and Qureshi doubled as a keyboardist and additional guitarist. During late nights, Croft and Sim either shared lyrics with each other through instant messaging or rehearsed quietly with Smith and Qureshi in their bedrooms so they would not disturb the rest of the household. The xx were greatly influenced by American R&B producers such as The Neptunes and Timbaland, whose minimalist productions incorporated vocal harmonies, clapping percussion, unconventional samples and pronounced beats. The band covered Aaliyah's "Hot Like Fire" (1997), Womack & Womack's " Teardrops" (1988) and other past R&B hits when they performed live and recorded their demos.

After posting the demos on their Myspace page, the xx drew the interest of Young Turks, an imprint label of XL Recordings. They submitted the demos to XL's head office at Ladbroke Grove and were subsequently signed to a recording contract. The group worked with producers such as Diplo and Kwes, to no success before they were introduced to the audio engineer Rodaidh McDonald by the xx's manager Caius Pawson, who gave him three CDs of demos titled "Early Demos", "Recorded in Rehearsal Space" and "What Producers Did Wrong". McDonald was impressed by the intimate quality and use of silence on the demos, which both he and the band felt may have challenged other producers who wanted to incorporate their individual tastes: "They'd worked with about four other producers before then that had – and no discredit to them – I guess they'd seen a lot of space to add a kind of stamp on. There was a lot of empty space in the xx's music, even then, in the 'Early Demos'. But we just found that the best stuff was the most sparse."

Recording and production

At the behest of XL's owner Richard Russell, the xx recorded their debut album at the label's small, in-house recording studio – XL Studio – making them the first act to record there. It was once the head office building's rear garage before Russell transformed it at the beginning of 2008 into a makeshift writing, rehearsal and demo space for XL's artists. McDonald was assigned in September to manage and properly equip the room, which he liked because it was soundproof and "isolated from the rest of the office, so it wasn't like you were working in the record company's presence." Croft, on the other hand, called it a "pretty confined space" the size of a bathroom. Over the next few months, McDonald and Pawson prepared a budget for the label to fund the studio's preliminary setup, which would have recording equipment specifically suited for the xx, including a modestly sized soundboard ideal for recording a small group.

The xx started to record the album in December 2008 with McDonald, who engineered the sessions. They would usually record at night after XL's staff had left, which Croft said made it feel "isolated and quite creepy". To reproduce the sound he had heard on the band's demos, McDonald had them write down their instruments' settings and test different areas of the studio to determine where he should record each member. Sim, who played a Precision Bass manufactured in the 1970s, was often recorded in the hallway outside the studio with a Fender Bassman, one of several amplifiers McDonald experimented with for ''xx''. Some of Qureshi and Croft's guitars were also done in the hallway. Qureshi played a Gibson SG with a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe or Blues Deluxe amplifier, while Croft played an Epiphone Les Paul on most of the album and a Gibson ES-335 on a few songs. For her lead guitar parts, Croft used a delay pedal and a Roland Micro Cube amplifier with a reverb setting, which McDonald felt would best replicate her "icy", echo-filled sound on the demos.

After all the instrumental elements had been tracked, Croft and Sim recorded their vocals together, rarely singing backup to one another on any of the songs. McDonald believed it was important for the singers to be "in sync" and share the same mental state or mood when performing full takes of songs, some of which he said benefited from when they were both "quite tired and emotional". He had Croft and Sim sing into Neumann microphones on most of the songs in order to make their vocals sound as "intimate" and conversational as possible. The microphones were among the more expensive items he borrowed for the studio's preliminary setup so XL would not be overwhelmed with a costly budget.

Despite McDonald's close involvement, the xx had been encouraged to self-produce their album by Russell; he believed it would remain faithful to both the band's distinctive live sound and the DIY ethic practised at XL since its beginnings as a rave label. Smith was chosen by the rest of the group to produce ''xx''. He used Logic 8 recording software on his Mac Pro and often worked late nights in a nearby conference room while they recorded in the studio with drafts of his beats. Smith produced rhythm tracks with an Akai MPC sampler, which he occasionally processed through a Roland RE-201 and other effects units. He also created click tracks for the rest of the band to keep timing when they recorded their individual parts. After those parts had been recorded, he refined and incorporated his beats into the songs for three to four weeks. Croft trusted that Smith, who did not want to conceal any imperfections by overproducing ''xx'', would make it practical for them to perform live rather than layer the songs with several guitar or vocal elements.

Most of ''xx'' was recorded from late December 2008 to late January 2009 before McDonald and Smith began an exhaustive mixing process, which lasted two weeks. For each song, they mixed one or two tracks of each instrument and used Waves Audio components to equalise the recordings. Having enjoyed how the demos captured unintended background noises such as street sounds, McDonald deliberately left certain sounds that would have otherwise been unwanted in the final mix. "I wanted it to sound like people in a room, rather than this polished kind of perfect crystalline thing", he explained. "It was all the small details that we really liked."

In February 2009, the group wrote and recorded "Fantasy", "Shelter" and "Infinity" before finishing ''xx'', possibly by month's end according to McDonald; the album's liner notes credited the final date of recording as April. Sim sang his vocals for "Infinity" on the side of the studio opposite from Croft after his microphone had been unintentionally moved there, which resulted in a distant-sounding vocal exchange on the song. While recording "Shelter", a mechanical part from the guitar amplifier loosened and caused it to make a clattering sound, which McDonald and the xx chose to retain. "It was just like this missing piece of percussion that the track needed!", McDonald recalled.

Music and lyrics

The songs on ''xx'' are composed around a framework of basslines and beats, while incorporating simple guitar riffs for melody, rhythm and texture; their melodic notes are separated by rests. Croft said the band's style of instrumentation became defined by the limited equipment they originally used: "My guitar sound pretty much came from discovering there was reverb on my little practice amp and really loving the mood it created." The loudest song, "Intro", is a largely instrumental recording with double-tracked beats, distorted keyboard, non-lexical vocables and a guitar riff. Songs such as " Crystalised" and "VCR" begin with a melodic ostinato and some understated sounds, including a xylophone on the latter, before leading to quietly sung verses. Croft and Sim exchange verses on "Crystalised" while backed by the sound of drum stick clicks and basslines before the beat is heard. On the austerely arranged "Night Time", Croft sings its first two minutes over only guitar and bass before its beat develops. "Fantasy" is highlighted by a shoegazing guitar sound.

While McDonald observes a predominant R&B element, Russell feels the xx's music evokes the early hip hop records he listened to when he was young, as they are often limited to vocals, samples and beats. Music journalists, however, infer from ''xx'' that their influences are alternative rock acts such as Portishead, Young Marble Giants and Cocteau Twins, the last of which Croft said she had never heard before the album was released. ''The Scotsman'' describes ''xx'' as a minimalist, melancholic indie pop record that draws on elements from electronica and R&B, as well as The Cure and other alternative groups. According to Sarah Boden of ''The Observer'', the album's unadorned, dream pop love songs are reminiscent of Cocteau Twins and Mazzy Star, because they feature low tempos, moody melodies and rhythms influenced by R&B and dubstep. Their arrangements have what Neil McCormick calls "a very British, industrial aspect", somewhat similar to the dub-inflected post-punk sound of the English producer Martin Hannett and his work with the band Joy Division. Both Croft and Sim said their combination of seemingly disparate influences could be attributed to the variety in each band member's music collection.

On ''xx'', Croft and Sim touch on themes of love, desire and loss in their songwriting, which Croft said has "always been based around emotions, right from the start. My favourite songs are usually quite sad and I think heartbreak is something that so many people can connect with." Like Croft, Sim said he wrote much of his lyrics at night when his emotions ran "a bit higher". Because of their reserved personalities, Robert Christgau believes they rely on a low-key, vulnerable style and exchange "ideas about intimacy as contemporaries, comrades, prospects, lovers, ex-lovers and friends". According to ''NME'' magazine's Emily Mackay, all of the songs deal with the consuming emotions associated with first love, including the tacit intimacy on "VCR", the yearning expressed on "Heart Skipped a Beat" and the premature affection warned of on "Crystalised". Petra Davis from ''The Quietus'' argues that the thematic crux of ''xx'' is in the succession of songs from "Islands" to "Shelter", each of which sees "a radical shift in perspective on a similar – perhaps a single – love story."

The album's Roman numeral title refers to each of the band members having turned 20 years old by the time ''xx'' was released. Because of their age, many critics interpret the songs as nocturnal depictions of adolescent lust. Philip Sherburne writes in ''Spin'' that ''xx'' brims with a "young lust" often found in rock music, and recordings such as "Fantasy" and "Shelter" express a jaded yearning, particularly in a lyric from the latter song: "Can I make it better with the lights turned on". Croft vehemently denied this: "We were writing these songs when we were 17. I can honestly say I've never thought this is about my sex life." Croft and Sim, who were both gay, did not intend for the songs to be heard as romantic duets; she said they are singing "past each other" rather than to each other. Having combined their individually written lyrics, they could not definitely explain what their songs were about, although Croft said Sim's lyrics resonated with her nonetheless and enjoyed the personal interpretation it offered. "You can put them into your own life", she explained, "like, 'Oh, this is my song. The romantic situations Sim wrote of had been inspired by other people. "I hadn't really had any relationships to be working off, but I had a huge interest in life, and looking at other people's relationships around me", he said.

Marketing

"Crystalised" was released as the xx's debut single on 27 April 2009 and helped build interest in the band among listeners and journalists. It was part of a series of singles from ''xx'', which included "Basic Space" on 3 August, "Islands" on 26 October and "VCR" on 25 January 2010. The band's music was largely ignored by BBC Radio 1 in the United Kingdom, and other major media outlets also believed they did not warrant strong attention; one editor from ''NME'' said at the time that the band was not ideal for their magazine's front cover. In the United States, the group benefited from the word-of-mouth marketing of blogs, beginning when they performed six consecutive sold-out shows at New York City clubs such as Pianos and the Mercury Lounge months prior to the album's release.

Several of the songs from ''xx'' were licensed by XL to television programmes in the UK and North America. "Intro" became widely used as theme music in television, including sports highlights, episodes of series such as ''Law & Order'' and ''Cold Case'', an advertisement for AT&T and BBC
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