Different Strokes/ Different Folks

Mercury Award winners The xx released their sophomore record, Coexist, earlier this month. Knowing that music critics never agree, we at the Boar decided to give you two verdicts, two justifications and, thus, two sweet, sweet reviews.

**Michael Perry**

Unlike many influential debuts, The xx’s first album wasn’t an overnight success. While some bands produce albums which explode upon impact before rapidly fading, when xx was released in 2009, it was as if the group had just lit the fuse of a slow-motion firework. Over the last few years, they’ve swelled from unassuming beginnings to become internationally-beloved purveyors of a magical indie-meets-post-dubstep sound. The good news is that they’ve survived the glare of the media spotlight with dignity and composure, and as a result, their follow-up feels completely unforced. Granted, the band don’t tread too far into uncharted terrain, but they have tinkered with their fundamental sound, subtly spicing the formula with new flavours while simultaneously refining what came before.

Anyone expecting a more dance-centred direction might be slightly bemused by how stripped-back Coexist feels. Listening back to xx afterwards, it’s surprising to hear how busy it sounds by comparison, and there’s little on display here as instant as, say, the mistily entwining guitars of “Crystallised”, or the shuffling pangs of “Islands”. Comparing the two records, xx sounds much spikier – poppy, even. Coexist flows by fluidly with a minimum of fanfare or fuss, its songs melting into one another as Romy Madley-Croft and Oliver Sim reflect on happy relationships turned sour by simple, fatal mistakes.

Yet despite this gloomier template, it’s far from an impenetrable listen. The xx have an ability to fleck even the most desolate of soundscapes with moments of striking beauty. “Tides” recalls the short sweetness of “VCR”, and throws in a rolling bass groove. Elsewhere, “Chained” features a painfully direct closing refrain of “we used to be closer than this”, and the aching confessionals of “Missing” are pierced by a sharpened guitar which cuts like glass. Throughout, the group sound much more confident and assured, although there’s an aching sense of hurt underpinning those hushed whispers. To borrow a lyric from the thumping shimmer of “Our Song”, The xx still “know all the words / to take you apart”.

It might not be as immediately gripping as their debut, but it’s feasible that in a few years’ time we could be viewing Coexist as The xx’s masterpiece, or perhaps a baby-step towards something even more beguiling. For now, though, it’s enough to be gifted with a record as quietly beautiful as this, as we witness The xx carving their own mysterious path through this troubling world.

**Christopher Sharpe**

The xx return, and the result is a record frequently possessing intelligence, ingenuity and a handful of moments of real captivating beauty. Indeed, there are all the signs of a really great album everywhere… but there’s a but. A big but.

They are a band in full possession of a sound and atmospheric vibe that, whilst not wholly original – with influences running the gamut from shoegaze to R&B and back again – is highly distinctive and identifiable.

Consequently, it is also quite easily distilled to its essence – the Romy Croft/Oliver Sim dual-headed hydra of vocals, intermingling and cooing under the bedsheets; guitar lines gliding and reverberating over woozy bass and Jamie xx’s staple pulsating electronic heartbeat.
And this distinctiveness is frequently where the issue lies. From the opening track ‘Angels’ we unearth the first indications of stylistic tropes which, when repeated to excess elsewhere, reveal an over-reliance on a signature aesthetic, a dearth in inventiveness, and, perhaps most disturbingly for the band, a sense of emotional disconnect.

This track becomes a lyrical template throughout in its dichotomy between loved and lovelorn, relationships and non-relationships that proceeds to constitute the entire thematic body of the album, and thus a moment of isolated, emotional strength becomes belittled by a wider half-hour of patchy copy-and-paste lyrics.

The sounds are similarly repetitive and this becomes even more frustratingly apparent when where the album really thrives are in its textures, in the moments of difference: the steel drums on ‘Reunion’ that bring character and a new dynamic to The xx formula; tempo changes which in the clearing often become far more electronic and thrilling; ‘Tides’’ a-capella opening and gorgeous strings emerge that stand out strikingly amidst the rest of the album.

But even here with the latter, another crucial flaw of the song-writing of the album arises – overeager song cropping. Songs are in a constant disappointing habit of simply ending, and it is this failure to flow and truly conclude that works to the detriment of one of their greatest strengths: creating immersive atmospheres and rolling grooves.

These failures of construction, when combined with the lyrical shortcomings of the record, ultimately lead to an inescapable sense of disappointment on an otherwise fine record. The band actually sum up the issue rather effectively themselves: “Did I hold you too tight, did I not let enough light in?” Yeah… yeah I’m afraid you did overly-attached girlfriend meme.