Thy Kingdom Glum
They dress in black and tend to pout a lot. But don’t be put off by the long faces – The XX might just be the year’s most thrilling newcomers.
Ed Power, 01 Sep 2009
Lurking in a corner office at his record company’s London headquarters, The xx’s Oliver Sims clears his throat. “It’s “xx”– not “double x”,” offers the softly spoken singer after one of those pauses that threatens to linger all afternoon. “We came up with the name because we thought it looked good aesthetically. It was chosen purely for visual reasons. We put quite a lot of thought into everything we do. But, of everything, this has the least meaning. It was picked purely for visual reasons. Afterwards, people started asking us if it had anything to do with double x chromosomes (the female genetic). Those angles never occurred to us.”
All flapping coat-tails and frosty glares, The xx look like they’ve just stepped out of a ‘70s vampire movie. Their music’s rather downbeat too, a sub-arctic melange of Mazzy Star shoegaze and elegiac dance rhythms, elevated above the merely formulaic by the ethereal vocal interplay between Sim and long-time songwriting partner Romy Madley Croft.
“It’s all been a bit strange,“ says Sim of the group’s sudden and, for him at least, unexpected rise to prominence (they make an eagerly awaited Irish debut at Electric Picnic).
“We played London for the first time in four months recently and it was a major jump. A lot of the audience were there to see us, as opposed to having just stumbled through the doors. And they knew all the songs. It was a funny feeling, seeing all these people mouthing along.”
Normally when the two key members of a buzzy new outfit claim not to be able to recall first clapping eyes on one another, it’s because they were too drunk/drugged/otherwise stupefied to be in possession of their senses at the time. In the case of Sim and Madley Croft, however, there’s a better excuse.
“We’ve known each other since nursery school,“ Sim explains. “Since we were three-years-old basically. We went to the same nursery, the same primary, the same secondary schools. She’s like my sister basically. I don’t remember the first time we met. I think at that age your parents chose your friends for you. I’m pretty happy with my mum’s choice. ‘
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