It’s been out for a few months now and is one of the most hyped albums of the year, with glowing reviews coming from all corners of the press. So it should be time to give these four moody youths from Putney, south London a bit of breathing space. But instead I shall continue to suffocate them with enthusiastic praise, and state my case as to why these kids who sound like an even sulkier and more lovesick version of the Cure playing Beyoncé covers in a very dark basement have made the album which best encapsulates what it is to be a teenager in Britain 2009.
As soon as you listen to this record you are undeniably confronted with the fact that this is a product of teenagers who have grown up in noughtie’s Britain. The amalgamation of shimmering indie guitar lines and vocals reminiscent of American pop r’n’b demonstrates the influence of the two genres that have had the biggest impact on the UK chart this decade. These styles of music have been inescapable over the last 10 years and their chart success is evidently a strong indication that they are the genres that have had the most widespread effect on British youths.
Yes, the xx are probably best described, though only in a very broad sense, as an indie band due to the guitar being at the forefront of their sound and the goth cloud that covers them. Yet, as adolescents of the noughties they also show, through the vocal melodies and the freedom of the bass lines throughout the song structures, how much of an effect American pop r’n’b has had on their musical upbringing.
The rejection of live drumbeats in favour of samplers and drum machines is another example of musicians brought up on modern US hip-hop. More importantly though it shows the continued ‘electronic danceification’ of indie guitar bands in the last few years to the extent that definitions of what is purely indie music and what is dance music or electronic music have become pleasantly blurred. This has a lot to do with the mass of dance remixes for indie acts that are so heavily promoted on the blogosphere meaning that these days, genres of dance music have just as much, if not even more of a presence as guitar bands in the life of the average hipster. And in this vein, it is a sound born much closer to home than stateside rap, a sound that lays underneath all the xx’s songs, that teenagers in the UK today will feel most affinity with.
Dubstep is quickly becoming the most important musical sub-culture for today’s download generation in this country and is now spreading all over the western world. The slow-burning, dark, spooky atmosphere that is the prevalent quality of the genre is there to hear in all 11 tracks of the xx’s debut album. Only British teenagers themselves could produce a record with these influences, mainstream and underground, that are so in touch with a diverse range of teenagers across the country.
The xx treat these different stylistic influences with great craftsmanship. They don’t just try and stuff different genres into a bag, then smack it about a bit to see if it works. They make very collected, precise, unpretentious music that carefully thinks about how to employ its influences. That’s not to say that this is clinical, soulless music, in fact it is quite the opposite. It is one of the most emotional and soulful pop releases of the year and this is where it connects with an adolescent audience.
All the songs on this album are about teenage sexuality and the fragility that this involves. The lyrics talk about ‘giving it up on Thursday’ and of naïve girls that want to be loved and wonder whether that they ‘can make it better with the lights turned off’. The beautiful tenderness with which female singer Romy delivers these lines creates the sensation that we’re hearing something incredibly private, the brittle, innermost thoughts of a teenage girl. Coincidentally, this theme of ‘not a girl, not yet a woman’, as Britney so intelligently put it back in the day, also picks up on a current worldwide trend in cinema of uneasy, female coming-of-age films such as ‘An Education’, ‘Precious’, ‘She’ and ‘Fishtank’.
Clearly, this record is the year’s best account of teenage life. But I will go further and say that this is, overall, the best debut album of 2009. This is due to the simple fact that the xx have written 11 remarkable sounding songs which together define the end of decade zeitgeist but moreover, have the quality to still sound incredible in 10, 20 years time. If I’m wrong I give you my permission to smack my future self in the mouth and tell me not to get ahead of myself when it comes to the importance of moody youths.
