While discussing the xx’s upcoming sound in a December 2011 interview with Digital Spy, producer Jamie Smith said that club music had a major influence on their next album. Such a statement seemed an odd way to describe a band known for weightless atmospherics, soft synths and haunting voices dripping with beautiful lyrics.
Fans can breathe a sigh of relief, because all of the above is still present in the band’s sophomore effort, “Coexist.” There are a number of instances when experimentation with a more upbeat dance beat can be found, but this is hardly the kind of club sound you would find Calvin Harris pumping out of his amps with a blinding light show in a Vegas club. It’s more like a smoky New York bar where everyone moves slow and sexy.
The album starts off with first single “Angels,” which is as soft and luminous as the name suggests. Frontwoman Romy Madley Croft’s voice is wistful as she sings of “being in love with you as I am.” Though a vast departure from the popular drum-heavy “Intro” that led off their debut album and introduced the world to their unusual sound, it’s still something you’d only expect the xx to produce.
We get the first taste of head bopping with the next song, “Chained,” with whipped-cream light beats piercing in and out over drums like changing graphics exploding on an iTunes visualizer. And when that heavy guitar comes in, so prominent in the band’s first album, it shakes the whole sound up and makes you realize this is hardly going to be predictable.
Though the first half of the album is full of great experimentation, with most tracks barely clocking in at three minutes, you are constantly left wanting more. That’s usually a good thing, but it’s more of an abrupt cut-off where you don’t get to find out the ending of a chapter, rather than making you want to turn the page.
The band pays this absence back tenfold in the standout second-half of the album, starting with “Reunion.” Mixing heavy beats, varying synth and a steel drum that sounds like it should be accompanying a luau, the song is a cornucopia of sounds. One of the more danceable tracks, it has a beat that makes you want to shimmy with a stranger as Croft and fellow vocalist Oliver Sim ask, “Did I see you? / See me in the moonlight.”
With such an unusual and unique sound, the xx’s beautiful lyrics are often fighting for attention. This isn’t the case in standout track “Sunset,” which has Croft and Sim crooning the story of a failed relationship. As Croft sings, “I always thought it was a shame / that we have to play these games,” the way her voice wilts on the final word is a testament to the amount of emotion both singers pour into each syllable. As Sim continues, “when I see you again / and I’m greeted as a friend / it is understood / that we did all we could,” you can’t help but hurt with him.
“Missing,” the most intense song on the album, takes the band to the kind of darkness found on old tracks like “Stars” and “Shelter.” It seems to finalize the failing relationship in the previous song, as Sim proclaims “there is no hope for you and me,” and suddenly the music cuts into a few seconds of silence before that heavy drum and synth pulse through again. It has great potential as background music for the next inevitable breakup on a CW soap.
And that’s what’s so great about “Coexist” ““ its flexibility. Songs like “Reunion” and “Swept Away” are begging to be remixed for club bangers or played in pure form for sexy cool-downs, and the album as a whole would make an apt companion for a rainy day or post-breakup alone time. Whatever the occasion, it’s hard not to get, well, swept away.
Email Konstantinides at akonstantinides@media.ucla.edu .