I spy with my little eye something that begins with H. Under-cuts on girls, thick rimmed glasses on men, and when did beards go out of fashion and moustaches come in?
To be honest, the entire charade of having to apply to a ballot in the hope you are lucky enough to be selected just so that you’re allowed to pay money to see a band is a bit of hipster wank. Total hipster wank. The xx might be cooler than cool (ICE COLD!) but they could have toured Australia with a bit more grace and humility and sell their tickets like any other normal band.
Unfortunately, dark fringes, mysterious allure and paler skin tones than Whitewalkers (wiki it) doth not a great live performer make.
The xx are great fodder in the ongoing debate about whether style has overtaken substance in the Pitchfork era of indie music. Their Mercury Prize winning debut album for many is night-time, acid-tripping, lay on your bed in the starfish position kind of music; so the experience all changes when instead of hugging your pillow you are forced to stand in the middle of The Forum for an hour watching their motionless performance.
As lead singer Romy Madley-Croft whispers the opening lines of their new single ‘Angels’, it’s baffling to think how it was chosen as a lead single or as a way to begin a gig. The song goes nowhere; it has little melody and is too sparse to singalong to properly. It is pretty though, definitely pretty.
Madley-Croft’s voice has that ethereal breath to it, but like much of their catalogue it hums along instead of reaching any glorious conclusion – maybe the band need to look up the definition of a crescendo.
The setlist of the night is mostly a retrospective of their debut album, despite this being a promotional tour for their new aptly titled album Coexist, a name no doubt chosen for its coolness and inclusion of the letter ‘x’.
They launch into ‘Islands’ and the crowd loses their shit, another thing that fucks the entire experience up for The xx in the flesh. Their music is so dependent on silence and space and atmosphere, the breaks between notes need to be able to breathe. This crowd is so excited that every time there is a second of silence, one punter decides it is the perfect time for a well placed ‘WOO!’, destroying any semblance of intimacy.
They are sweet and humble in their introductions to the crowd, thanking us for remembering them after not touring for two and a half years, which is naively cute considering that is a relatively short amount of time in between tours to Australia for most bands.
Oliver Sim remarks, “We haven’t played many headline shows yet, mostly festivals where you feel a million miles away, so to see so many faces is terrifying.” You can tell he’s not lying too; they look hella awkward on stage together. Standing motionless, playing their respective instruments and do not interact with each other at all.
It’s not that it is expected of them to do back-to-back solos a la Jon Bon Jovi, but a wink or a nod wouldn’t go astray every once and a while.
Tracks from their new album, including ‘Fiction’, ‘Reunion’ and ‘Sunset’, are sprinkled amongst the likes of ‘Heart Skipped A Beat’, ‘VCR’ and ‘Crystallised’ and their new tracks sound like they have a bit of life to them with Jamie XX amping up the percussion into a glitchier 5/4 beat and making use of a haunting piano.
Madley-Croft provides a cool a cappella in ‘Basic Space’ and finishing with ‘Night Time’, the band gets as close as they can to ‘rocking out’ with Romy even dropping the guitar line from Jamie XX’s remix of Gil Scott Heron ‘I’ll Take Care Of U” as they jam out their set. It was impressive enough to see the static crowd move their knee and hip joints for what seemed like the first time that night.
Returning for a mammoth encore opening with ‘Intro’, the rib-cage vibrations around the venue beg the question whether Jamie XX had just found the volume knob on his drum machine as the Forum was suddenly filled with the reverberation it was in need of the entire night. (‘Volume! That’s what was missing).
As they closed with ‘Stars’, it occurred that an AV Show and some comfortable couches to accompany their audio trips would also suffice in improving a pleasant if not slightly boring live show. Turn up the volume next time.
– Chris Lewis
