Track of the Moment: Angels by The xx

 

I love to steal away Track of the Moments from Steve, and with today’s post on The xx, I’ve done just that. Actually, I don’t know if Steve likes The xx, but knowing his tastes, I’d be surprised if he didn’t. If that’s not a quote that should go on the front of the album, I don’t know what is.

The xx is a British band formed in the prestigious Elliott School. No, it’s the not the college of music our Elliott founded (that doesn’t exist yet silly), but rather the one in England that’s produced some great talents like Burial, Pierce Brosnan (the actor, not that there's a band named after him), and Four Tet (who, by the way, looks like a meth addict who hasn’t slept for 3 days in his Wikipedia picture). The xx claims that the school didn’t have much influence over them, but whatever, they did go there. Shut up.

The xx is ambient pop done right. All of their good songs are the perfect definition of restrained music. Usually I’d throw on, say Major Lazer’s “Get Free (ft. Amber Coffman)” or Usher’s “Climax” to show what I meant by restraint (strangely, Diplo produced Climax, and is the main man of Major Lazer, who isn’t normally known for his restraint). But every song just has so much energy bubbling below the surface, so much tension in the instrumentation that builds up and tries to break through, but can’t ever get there. So it sits there, being quiet and ambient, waiting for its chance to crash down on your ears in a wall of sound. Even the songs that do let the beast out of the cage and allow for some fantastic crescendos and rises and falls, like “Missing” just feel so right, so good.

Who thought "Hey, let's parody The Smiths so we can show how deep and moody we are, but do it ironically."

The xx go for this pillow talk, dream pop sound. Lots of reverb on the guitars, ethereal synths, and quiet instrumentation, with whispered and murmured vocals on top of them. While I’m a big lyrics guy, I can also sit back and just listen to the sound of someone’s voice, which is almost mandatory here, with the murmurs and relatively weak lyrics here. Not to say it's a bad thing; I personally enjoy it. But it’s one of those sounds that you either love or hate, get or don’t get, enjoy or don’t enjoy. I personally love them, and if you check out “Angels” down below, you’ll see why. It’s just so damn good.

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