The XX

Whoa they covered Teardrops? *scours the interwebs*

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrVgCCUQ3fQ

Oh man, for a whole 30 seconds I thought it was going to be the Massive Attack song and got really REALLY excited. But alas, no.

sadly it was just the totally awesome womack and womack song

W&W's Teadrops >>>>>>>>>>>>>> Massive Attack's Teadrop (and I do love Massive Attack)

And I think Massive Attack would agree

W&W's Teadrops >>>>>>>>>>>>>> Massive Attack's Teadrop (and I do love Massive Attack)

― Andy K, Thursday, August 27, 2009 6:03 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

Thanks for YT clip Andy!

xx is the first studio album by English indie rock The xx. Produced by the group themselves, it was originally released by Young Turks Records on August 17, 2009 in the United Kingdom and is scheduled to be released on October 20th in North America.

YEAH, it will be out soon here in America. That cover is great.

just read that they scrapped sessions with Diplo (?!). good on them.

cover of 'do you mind' the uk funky classikk - http://www.thefader.com/2009/08/26/the-xx-do-you-mind-kyla-cover-mp3/

these guys are pretty rad

Got this on a chum's recommendation and a couple of cursory listens have revealed the lad's singing voice as a *big* stumbling block for me - his affected drawl is the kind of thing that gets put on by every other male teenage contestant on the X-Factor etc and it pretty much scuppers the whole endeavour. That and the dreadful lyrics.

If you're going to have the vocals so front-and-centre on a record then they'd better be special and in this case it's just not working for me.

rly tho what is it with bands like this covering songs like that instead of actually trying to make music more like that in the first place (not that these are bad examples of that necessarily, unlike say FAT M doing 'You Got The Love')

Maybe they don't want to make music more like that in the first place? Maybe they think they'd be rubbish at it? Maybe there are elements in the song that they wanted to bring out in a different way? There are loads of reasons!

Actually the The XX making funky would almost certainly be terrible - unlike this cover which I think is great.

of course of course, still quite a frustrating trend at times and sometimes hard to see the value in re-context of these songs beyond cred-chasing xp

Maybe they think they'd be rubbish at it?

is this not u+k?

"actually trying to make music more like that in the first place" leads us to Bloc Party's "One More Chance" and that horrible strangulated vocal which dude can get away with in indie but not in piano house.

tho who knows, maybe Temper Trap will cover 'In The Morning' and i'll love it

"actually trying to make music more like that in the first place" leads us to Bloc Party's "One More Chance" and that horrible strangulated vocal which dude can get away with in indie but not in piano house.

Or alternatively, The XX debuting with a mediocre dubstep track that disappears without trace upon release.

and that horrible strangulated vocal which dude can get away with in indie but not in piano house

they could've made it as an instrumental! interesting statement tho re shit horses ok for some courses

Joker remix of XX surely in progress as we type

Or alternatively, what is the point in castigating an indie band for not making a dance record when there are already so many potentially great dance records in the world that no one has a hope of hearing them all anyway?

because sometimes hard to see the value in re-context of these songs beyond cred-chasing

i'm not saying XX covers aren't good just that it's part of a trend which seems to usually not work

total headphone album

^^ yes.

Quite impressed that they self-produced, since the production so ideally fits the material.

listening to this now and while i don't have a fully formed opinion the thing i keep coming back to is THEY ARE 20 and understand a lot more about why music works than most lifelong musicians do.

And good on them for that. (Reminds me of Disco Inferno in a way...)

i'm not saying XX covers aren't good just that it's part of a trend which seems to usually not work

it's true that it's an annoying trend which usually does work - what's amazing is that in this case it works superlatively. they've covered 3 originals which i love every single note of, and done them in such a way that it seems totally natural that they should be played like that. that's an incredible thing to have done.

Just read the P4K review, and this:

The xx didn't need a gestation period, though xx is nuanced, quiet, and surprising enough that you might.

manages to capture exactly what I've been trying to express about this record when trying to sell my friends on it, but about twelve times more eloquently.

only heard the tubes posted here, but i'm sorta ~almost~ really liking these guys. like its some uncanny valley thing, where it sounds enough ~like~ music i should like, but falls short in some minor and inconspicuous way

young marblemouth giants

I just wish they'd left all that ropey single-note straight eighth note guitar off the album. Dah dah dah dah dah dah dah dah DAH DAH DAH DAH DAH DAH DAH DAH dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee. Young people need to be dissuaded from learning from the Bernard Sumner Guitar Method Series (bless, tho).

try listening with better audio than youtube tbh

did so.

was talking to gbx i guess

i like this a lot, its use of space is really great & almost reminds me more of sade than any of the r&b references they mention ... like the idea that space between sounds implies sexiness that filling that space would not (things unsaid etc)

a whole lotta restraint shown by some kids who arent more than 19

i do think the affectations of the male singer are kind of a problem, tho. he sounds young, in a bad way, trying to front some confidence he doesnt really have

also found the kyla cover really boring ... a lot of what makes the og work is the way the smoothness of the vocals is balanced by such a muscular groove

it's funny, when i saw them live i was kind of stunned by the male singer, there was something in his voice that hooked me, maybe it was the same thing that sounds wrong on the record to youse - the girl's voice i've heard before in guitar music with girl vocals, although she's got a great version of it, she has the kind of voice that you fall in love with on a radio, that you want to hold hands with but are terrified of frightening away. But the boy's voice had something strange in it, a tender sort of soulish thing that i couldn't place, that sounded familiar and utterly out of context.

i think any complaint i might make is overrided by the THEY'RE 19 factor, that's just kind of amazing

here's to hoping they manage to be one of those indie bands that get their second record recorded in less than a year hey

This is growing on me a bit. I like the ones with the rumbling dubstep-influenced sub-bass. Maybe they need a bit more menace to go with the fragility.

There's definitely something about them, although they're a bit of a journalistic wet dream in terms of influences, style and age... Love Crystalised, but find the album a little slight. But good point made above, unusual for a bunch of young uns to be making such understated music. It'll probably grow on me.

In my major 'uh duh' moment of the day, turns out I have a promo copy of this album around that I was sent some time back -- but I have no memory of when! I need to clear my mail more often...

listened to this a few times now - not entirely sold. agree with someone upthread who said this seems to have all the elements of music i should like but just falls short somehow. lots of potential though.

i think any complaint i might make is overrided by the THEY'RE 19 factor, that's just kind of amazing

― thomp, Saturday, August 29, 2009 5:34 AM (16 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i dont think this is really that mind blowing & certainly not unprecedented in pop music. how old were tribe called quest when their first album dropped

yeah, is 19 unusually young to be a good songwriter already?

kind of?

they are good songwriters -- whats surprising about them being 19 is more their restraint & the smoother reference pts ppl are making ... its not so much 'skill' that surprises, its that sophisticated sultry mentality i think ... but again im not, like, SHOCKED by this

I was so prepared to hate this, but it's pretty inoffensive, and whoever has mentioned that the production has a really nice spatial feel is right -- it's a pretty cozy sound. That said: I don't totally dig these affectless, almost-drugged vocals. I guess they do the job w/r/t the sound, but they make each song basically indecipherable from the next, and it's kinda hard to care since it sounds like the vocalists barely care (the entire thing doesn't sound totally different than Bright Eyes circa 2005 on like "Lua," that tired, world-weary cosmopolitanism, and that kind of thing gets dated really quickly).

(Though this "shelter" song is pretty gorgeous in some super-brief moments.)

Eh, well the early songs on the disc remind me of The Cure. I like it (a lot).