THE XX – XX

Heart Skips a Beat. It acts both as a song title and a statement of the effect that The XX seem to be able to have upon their listeners with an almost unbelievably cool and gorgeous self-titled debut. That Romy Madley-Croft has perfectly mimicked Hope Sandoval’s drop dead, sexy hushed tones goes a long way to explaining this, but there is so much more. Is it the simple guitar lines, part Joy Division part The Cure; or the stripped back sounds of the keyboards? Perhaps it is the male and female vocals, at once disconnected and yet interwoven. They certainly know how to nod ever so closely at their influences without quite copying them, as Infinity shows, veering dangerously close to Chris Isaak’s Wicked Game but pulling away at the last moment like a game of musical chicken. Delicious in its tease. Their strength is perhaps their weakness, as XX rarely changes tempo or dynamic; yet when you do it so well, perhaps too much of a good thing is just enough.

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