Interview with The xx
From the coveted stage of the U.S’s infamous Saturday Night Live, to the addictive chaos of Tokyo, for indie electronic band The xx, the past few months have been a whirlwind of warm up gigs that precede the storm of a new album release.
The third instalment of musical escapism from the London-formed trio, I See You is a revelation; most notably, of a harmonic and lyrical positivity that has been distinctly absent in the band’s former releases. Where debut album xx and follow up record Coexist dealt predominantly in downbeat beats and furtive melancholy, I See You is altogether more uplifting in direction; a shift indicative of the ensemble’s steadily growing confidence – and a relationship that is tighter than ever before.
Romy Madley Croft, Oliver Sim and Jamie Smith (aka Jamie xx) all have something unique in common when it comes to making music – they all wanted to just make music. As Smith mentioned in a previous interview with fluoro, “I definitely never expected to be on this pathway, although I grew up making music”; it was an inherent instinct, not a planned trajectory underpinned by a desire to take to the stage or by the allure and glamour of fame. The xx is a manifestation of a bond that they sum up as “a meeting in the middle of three individuals”; a shared core, bolstered by their own independent and complementary talents.
As a result, their success has been exceptional, yet understated, developing organically based on creative merit, rather than a slew of industry marketing plugs.
They never imagined that they would be walking down the Saturday Night Live corridor, nor did thoughts of a now imminent worldwide tour ever cross their mind. But this is the scintillating state of play for one of the most lauded bands on today’s music scene.
After speaking with Smith on his solo-album In Colour, we caught up with him again, this time with Oliver Sim in toe to talk about their world and the new The xx album, which they’re as eager to drop as their fans are to hear.
f. It’s been a big year for you all, what’s been happening?
Oliver Sim. A new album, which we’ve been working on for a long time. We started writing for this album in 2013.
Jamie Smith. We were working on it for most of this year as well. We only finished it in… October?
OS. September.
f. And you were writing on the road weren’t you? While touring?
OS. Yeah. We didn’t write On Hold on the road but Performance and A Violent Noise we wrote while on the road. A Violent Noise was written for Jamie’s record and then…
f. How did you select the track for this record and not Jamie’s?
OS. I generally think that the lines between what’s intended for what are blurred, because we’ve made this record trying not too hard to sound like us I suppose, so letting go of what we think is maybe appropriate for The xx. Like would we put a Hall and Oates sample on an xx track? If we’d asked ourselves that question on Coexist, we probably would have said no.
f. What’s changed?
OS. I think the process of making Coexist was really a closed off experience. It was created with just the three of us in a room in North London. We were really proud of the album, but the process was confining. It was our first time making a record having an audience and people had noticed stuff in our music that maybe hadn’t been intentional in the first record. People were bringing out the space and the simplicity in the music, which came about by happy accident.
So making a second record we thought ‘okay people like this about us, let’s hold onto it, let’s push it even further’. We wanted to do something a bit different this time around and get out of London and be a bit less precious about the music and let people in early.
f. The sound across I See You is different. It’s a lot happier. Why is that?
JS. Well a lot has happened over the years, just the fact that we’ve got older is a big thing and that period in your life for anybody, no matter what you’re doing, is quite important for learning who you are. That’s why I think some of it’s more confident and joyous.
And in that time, we’ve had relationships and ended relationships and grown further apart and grown back closer together than ever before as friends, which is kind of one of the reasons the album’s called I See You, because I think we see each other a lot better now.
f. How do you think you’ve evolved since your first gigging days?
OS. As cliché as it is, it’s confidence.
We definitely weren’t very confident people to begin with I think we gained a lot of confidence in our own decision making and learnt to trust our instincts a bit more, because I think maybe there was a bit too much concentration on the outside world on Coexist. I can talk about how the other two have changed very easily; I think Romy has become just like a better singer – she’s just blown me away a few times in the studio. She’s just incredible, she surprised me a lot. Her voice has grown so much and her songwriting…she’s said stuff in songs before she’s said it to me, which has been a funny way of communicating, but brilliant. And Jamie has become a very, very confident producer as well. One thing I admire is that he’s had enough validation that he could be a bit of a dictator in the studio if he wanted to be, but he never has been and he hasn’t been on this record, he’s very open to ideas and kind of switching seats.
JS. From my end, looking to Ollie, if you listen to the first album and this album back to back, Oliver sounds like a tiny little version of himself on the first record. We used to have to play quietly because they sung quietly and now we can play really loud which is fun and it’s more dynamic. And on this album for the first time or more than ever, I’ve really tried to concentrate more on the lyric side of things just so I have a bit more of an understanding. I always ask them to send their song lyrics when they send demos and stuff and it was really great to read that stuff from Ollie because I hadn’t…although I’d listened a lot, I’d never really taken it in as much as I have on this album.
I find it very hard to listen to lyrics, like it’s not natural for me. I can listen to a song endlessly and still not know one word from the song so I have to make an effort to do it and that’s what I was trying to do.
f. How was working with the talented Rodaidh McDonald on the album?
JS. We’re all close friends and we worked together on the first record, so it was just nice to have him back in the room to balance off our ideas instead of things going round between the three of us and us kind of losing perspective a little bit.
He helped alleviate a lot of the stress from me from the technical side of things so that I could be more creative. He’s just a good presence to have in the room.
f. What’s the plan for the next couple of months?
OS. Touring, touring, touring. We go into rehearsals at the beginning of January and we’re still building the live show. On this run we’ve played five new songs and ideally we wanna be playing our entire album and also playing some old songs and maybe developing them. But I can look in my calendar and know where we’re gonna be up until mid-2018 pretty much, so it’s all in place.
f. Are you coming back to Australia?
OS. Yeah that’s a definite. That’s 100%. Not too late next year, we’ll be back. This is gonna be the longest wait right now, until January 13th. I cannot wait just to get the album out and start playing it to people.
f. Now, with the release of the album, you’re also bringing out three vinyls…
OS. Yeah one’s the regular, one’s the deluxe and one’s the double deluxe.
JS. The deluxe has the songs that didn’t make it to the album, but they’re still some of my favourite songs.
f. Why didn’t they make it to the album if they’re some of your favourites?
JS. Because we wanted it to be concise and it seemed to work best in this order.
OS. It was so so hard…we had over 20 tracks, not all recorded properly, but we brought it down to a final 13 and 14. That was the hardest – leaving some songs, not giving them their chance I suppose but some of them might even surface on the next album or something…actually I can’t even think about the next album [laughs]…
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With I See You years in the making, it’s unsurprising that the thought of the next album is far from front of mind. Instead, the trio are enjoying another success-fuelled stop on the journey as “one third of their favourite band”; caught up in the present, bubbling anticipation for what 2017 holds for their dynamic and direction as a band.
I See You is set for release on Friday 13 January 2017, with the release followed by a world tour.
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