xx (2009)

xx is the debut studio album by the English indie pop band the xx. It was released on 14 August 2009 by Young Turks, then an imprint label of XL Recordings, and recorded from December 2008 to February 2009 at the label's in-house studio in London. Producing the album, Jamie Smith of the xx created electronic beats for the songs on his laptop and mixed them in a detailed process with the audio engineer Rodaidh McDonald, who attempted to reproduce the intimate, unembellished quality of the band's original demos.

Along with the xx's early R&B influences, the album has drawn comparisons from journalists to alternative rock, electronica and post-punk sounds. Its largely melancholic songs feature minimalist arrangements built around Smith's beats and instrumental parts recorded by the other members of the band, including Oliver Sim's basslines and sparse guitar figures by Baria Qureshi and Romy Madley Croft, who employs reverb in her lead guitar playing. Most of the songs are sung as low-key duets by Croft and Sim, both of whom had written emotional lyrics about love, intimacy, loss and desire.

Released to widespread acclaim, xx was named one of 2009's best records and received praise for the band's atmospheric style of indie rock and pop as well as the interpersonal dimension of the performances. Commercially, it performed steadily over its first few years of release, becoming a sleeper hit in the United Kingdom and the United States, and eventually sold one million copies. Although major media outlets had largely ignored the band at first, and none of its singles became hits, xx received greater exposure from the licensing of its songs to television programmes and the band's Mercury Prize win for the album in 2010.

This album is the only one which released as the four-piece band. Shortly after the album's release, and with differences between Qureshi and the rest of the group leading to her dismissal, the xx continued to play as a trio on a protracted concert tour that helped increase their fanbase, reputation in the press and confidence as performers. xx proved highly influential in subsequent years, as its distinctive stylistic elements were incorporated by many indie bands and top-selling pop acts. One of the most acclaimed records of its era, it has been regarded as one of the greatest albums of the 21st century by NME, Rolling Stone and The Guardian.

Background

While students at South London's Elliott School in 2005, childhood friends Romy Madley Croft and Oliver Sim formed the xx with Jamie Smith and Baria Qureshi. Croft and Sim played guitar and bass, respectively, and dueted as the band's vocalists, while Smith programmed electronic beats for their songs and Qureshi doubled as a keyboardist and additional guitarist. During late nights, Croft and Sim either shared lyrics with each other through instant messaging or rehearsed quietly with Smith and Qureshi in their bedrooms so they would not disturb the rest of the household. The xx were greatly influenced by American R&B producers such as The Neptunes and Timbaland, whose minimalist productions incorporated vocal harmonies, clapping percussion, unconventional samples and pronounced beats. The band covered Aaliyah's "Hot Like Fire" (1997), Womack & Womack's "Teardrops" (1988) and other past R&B hits when they performed live and recorded their demos.

After posting the demos on their Myspace page, the xx drew the interest of Young Turks, an imprint label of XL Recordings. They submitted the demos to XL's head office at Ladbroke Grove and were subsequently signed to a recording contract. The group worked with producers such as Diplo and Kwes, to no success before they were introduced to the audio engineer Rodaidh McDonald by the xx's manager Caius Pawson, who gave him three CDs of demos titled "Early Demos", "Recorded in Rehearsal Space" and "What Producers Did Wrong". McDonald was impressed by the intimate quality and use of silence on the demos, which both he and the band felt may have challenged other producers who wanted to incorporate their individual tastes: "They'd worked with about four other producers before then that had – and no discredit to them – I guess they'd seen a lot of space to add a kind of stamp on. There was a lot of empty space in the xx's music, even then, in the 'Early Demos'. But we just found that the best stuff was the most sparse."