Mercury Music Prize Winners The XX - A truly great album.

The XX


Remember how it feels to be in love? I mean obsessively irrationally nothing-else-matters crazily in love? Then having that love shattered before your eyes like a broken snow globe and all the feelings of powerless pain and anguish that followed? If you can, then you will find The XX album an experience to savour.

Musically it is ethereal and quirky at times, but from the instrumental introduction onwards this is an album that wants to be seen as genuine, the real deal, but it's also an album to listen to closely and all the more rewarding for it. A decent bass woofer would be useful too as some of the production rumbles up from Hades.

Many of the songs take the form of a dialogue between two parties in a failed or failing relationship and the broad sweeps of the music underpin and symbolise the emotions of each piece – particularly in "Fantasy" and "Crystallised" . You feel, at times, as if you are reading the secret diary of a young girl who has had her whole world destroyed by misplaced love but somehow is still trying to cling on. At times the depth of pain in the voice reminded me of The Blue Nile. It is universally moving and yet totally genuine and personal at the same time.

There is poetry in these lyrics too. “Shelter” reads like a simplified Sylvia Plath or Stevie Smith with a relevance and poignancy echoed in a delayed single string guitar refrain that eventually sees the song segue into the more accepting finality of “Basic Space”. You feel like a secret voyeur on a disintegrating relationship – think “Picking Up After You” by Tom Waits or The The “Infected” album.

The highlight for me is “Infinity”. The male vocal implores the protagonist to “give it up” whilst she responds “I can’t give it up” over and over again like a text conversation stuck in auto-send. All accompanied by some “Wicked Game” guitar.

The last track, "Stars", does hint at redemption for both with its acceptance of sometimes just letting things happen slowly. A wonderful denouement.

These are not songs to strum and sing round a camp fire. You can hear New Order, Chris Isaacs, Velvet Underground , Tori Amos and Bowie if you listen hard enough. The end result is a thoroughly satisfying album that is deserving of its plaudits and whilst they have said they have no plans for another, it would be fascinating to see what this band grows into.