The XX bust the difficult second album myth

The XX prefer the dark

If you were as enamoured with the XX’s eponymous debut album as I was, you too had reason to worry. Would the guitar and vocal box-step between Romy Madley Croft and Oliver Sim be as dead cool and sexually tense? Would Jamie Smith (aka Jamie XX)’s spectral atmosphere and sparse production be as seductive? Could their second LP possibly have the impact its predecessor did?

What a relief. It’s been three days since the record’s release, and I imagine that you and Coexist are already in each other’s clutches. If you’ve yet to hear it, listen to a stream over here.

I spoke to Madley Croft the day after the band’s triumphant return to Metropolis in July.

Lorraine Carpenter: You’ve now played Metropolis twice. How does that experience compare to playing Place des Arts?
Romy Madley Croft: We did a lot of theatres with velvet seats on that tour, it was lovely. It creates a different atmosphere it automatically puts you in a different mind frame. But last night everyone was so loud, it was so much fun.

LC: You must’ve played your share of outdoor festivals. I can’t imagine you playing in the heat, in daylight.
RMC: We’ve experimented with all kinds of shows, but yeah, we prefer the dark.

LC: So was making your second album as difficult as the cliché suggests?
RMC: Oliver was told by a journalist at the end of the last tour, “You’re going to have a horrible time, it’s going to be really hard.” It was just different. We were so happy to be making more music that we had a really good time.
Our first album, like every band, is all the songs you’ve ever written, and we had all the time in the world to make that. We’d been playing some of those songs since we were 16; we’re 22 now, so we felt ready to write about us now. There was pressure, but just from ourselves, to do something that we were proud of — we really pushed ourselves. If I thought too much about everyone else’s expectations, I would’ve freaked out.

LC: You’re on a small label that probably doesn’t interfere or push too much. I imagine that helps.
RMC: Yeah, Young Turks, they’re our management as well. They’ve been with us since since the beginning, they’re our friends. They were so patient with us on the first album, we were 17, 18 but we didn’t actually make the album till we were turning 20. We grew with them for two years and they just left us and got us gigs. Time was something that really helped us, and I realize that that’s not a luxury a lot of young bands have. They get discovered and the album just comes out and maybe they didn’t have as much time as they would’ve liked to develop the songs.
With this album, they knew we wanted time off, and needed it. We came off tour and we were just left to it. We didn’t play them anything for a year. We would spend time with them as friends, but they wouldn’t be like, “So, what’s going on?” When we did open up to them, it was really good and there was a lot of constructive criticism.

LC: Has your songwriting process changed?
RMC: Yeah, it was different. Oliver and I wrote together, which is something we’d never done before. We wrote a lot of the first album via the Internet, sending things to each other and collaging. Having that separateness, you can kind of hide behind that, so that was good. We still worked that way on this album, we got about two thirds of it but we wrote 4 songs in the same room so it was good to have developed and open up to each other a little bit

LC: What other bands are you digging at the moment?
RMC: We love Grimes, we’re big fans. I find her very inspiring as a person, just doing it all herself.
There’s a band called Chromatics, they were a big influence on our first album and shortly after we finished our album, I discovered their new album, Kill for Love.
Also Perfume Genius, I love his new album; it’s been my airplane music in the last couple of weeks. We asked him to play a show with us in Seattle and it was really beautiful.

LC: Listening to your music and seeing your show, you appear to be very serious people. Is there anything you can say to dispel that notion? Do you have any geeky obsessions or hobbies?
RMC: (laughs) At the moment I don’t have any hobbies, I don’t have any time. But we do come across as serious, and I do think we’re a bit more lighthearted than we seem. That’s something I’d like to change. Our public persona is a bit moody, but we’re not moody teenagers anymore. ■