Despite what NPR and your resident barista-pseudo-snob seem to think, The xx are no longer a small band.
Sure, they still sound small (think a thinner Burial, with some serious Sunday-morning-hangover-malaise going on), but in between sessions of whispering painfully earnest nothings into weeping microphones the band now occupies themselves with winning Mercury Prizes and jamming moodily to gigantic festival crowds.
Their debut even recently made number 15 on Pitchfork Media’s prestigious People’s List (a sort of mass compendium of things that white college students approve of). Like it or not, this isn’t the same bashful trio of post-dubsteppers the blogosphere fell in love with three years ago.
The xx are now a big band with a big, exciting future—unfortunately, no one seems as unaware of that fact as the band themselves.
Jamie xx recently claimed that the band’s sophomore effort, the upsettingly passively-titled Coexist, draws inspiration from London’s bustling club scene.
If “The Inbetweeners” and “Skins” have taught me anything though (and they really haven’t), it’s that club music should be thunderous and repetitive—something The xx only half get right here.
As much as I snidely deride club music, the one thing you can never fault the latest banger for is lack of energy, and Coexist is deeply starved for propulsion and kinetics.
The songs all maintain the sexy, midnight slinkiness of the debut, but there’s zero payoff to any of the tracks, zero excitement.
Opener “Angels” starts out slow and pretty, with Romy Madley Croft trilling her usual “love is everything” lyrical fodder over patient guitar plucking, and for a while, it works.
But as bass thunders quietly off in the distance and a broken drum machine clatters in the corner, it’s hard not to imagine a world where The xx chose catharsis over ambience.
The track builds and builds, but there’s never the explosive release the music hints at.
Second single and second song “Chained” doesn’t fare much better either—Jamie xx manages to summon an actual beat here, but even the clattering Burial percussion can’t save a song with no melody and no hook to speak of.
The track runs on pure atmosphere and mood, stranded uncomfortably somewhere between The xx’s duel MGMT and James Blake sensibilities. And that would be fine as an isolated problem, but when the majority of the tracks suffer the same malaise it ends up being tough to ignore.
And, at a certain point, tiptoeing around the issue offers diminishing returns, so I’ll just say it: Coexist is a boring album.
It’s an incredibly well put-together and heartfelt ensemble of meandering tracks that all sound basically the exact same.
That’s the risk a band runs when they pioneer a sound and choose to inhabit the same space on the followup; after a while, the novelty just kind of wears away, and all you’re left with are an impressive stable of one-trick ponies.
It wouldn’t be so bad if The xx didn’t flirt with ennui so passionately by their very nature, but when the band decided to strip away the things that made them so bearable (if not endearing) in the first place, like actual hooks, they clearly decided wrongly.
“Swept Away,” the only track to puncture the four-minute mark, is the clear standout of the collection, if only because it’s the easiest to pick out from a lineup of its ilk.
Here Jamie delivers on his promise of “club music,” hand claps and propulsive tom hits and everything, and, combined with some sultry bass and crystal-clear guitar lines, the whole thing ends up just being wonderful.
“Fiction” comes as a close second, and “Missing,” entirely empty aside from a glacial beat, tremolo guitar and Romy and Oliver’s interweaving vocal lines, practically sweats earnestness, so much so it’s impossible to dislike.
But three songs out of 11 hardly does a good record make—and, as much as I want to love The xx and their particular approach to jet-black pop music, I just can’t forgive an album so incredibly nonplussed with its own homogeny.
The sophomore slump is a widely acknowledged phenomenon in most walks of life—after an immediate round of success, it’s much tougher to trailblaze rather than rest on one’s laurels and coast on established momentum.
Even if Coexist is a drab, colorless affair, I’m not content to write off The xx as a one-hit-wonder quite yet. Their debut was good enough to warrant that at least. Now, all that’s left to do is wait and hope that time doesn’t prove me wrong.
