The xx: Coexist [2012]

i'm def leaving open the idea that i'll really like or even love this album in six months or whatever but it's not as good as the debut

there's definitely something very one-trick about all the songs on first listen yeah, but for those who want the xx: dinner party 2, this is pretty good

that seems to be exactly wrong based on what I've heard so far (had to turn off the stream for a meeting)

nothing is as good a creation as "Crystalised" or "Islands", but nothing on the first album was as good a creation as "Crystalised" or "Islands" so I'm not really holding that against the second album, plus most of the arrangements even more precise/meticulous than the songs on the first album

I suspect what people are reacting to is the loss of the second guitar?

its realy sad it was a second guitar

lol

it's a bit more diffuse, this record, and it sounds like they're just trying things out and often just dropping the thing that they're trying. i don't think it sounds finished. it's much less focussed than XX.

aside: i kept being reminded of other things too which is fine, obviously - the guitar on fiction makes me think of smalltown boy. swept away makes me think of peking saint by cat power. there are other things but i can't recall them now. they still have a very singular sound.

otm about its tentativeness

tentative is exactly the right word.

you can't really blame them though. it's a huge burden to follow up a small record designed for a small audience that became a (relatively) huge thing. but it seems to me like they had a bit of a crisis of confidence. still, i think it's a good record, it's just not a perfect one (and XX is perfect to me).

Yep Jed has clinched it.

Like even the more interesting beats sound uncertain of themselves, like the curtains were pulled open before they'd finished touching up their make-up.

the album reminds me of the 3rd lotr movie in that it feels like it should end but doesn't ~4 different times and seems even more interminable every time

I don't think this sounds tentative at all. Spacy, yes; possibly disjointed here and there, but the main difference I hear is a thinning out of the textures and, in general, faster sparse tracks without anything like "Islands" or "Night Time" to offset them. I mean, I love "Shelter", I'm not going to complain too much if half the new tracks rip it off in different ways. Also, nothing I've heard on the new album is as off-putting as "VCR".

nah, tentative is exactly right. For all the talk about it being inspired by club music and so on, the band definitely sound like they were afraid to mess with the formula too much. Which is understandable really, they have a fairly unique, delicate sound. Go too far in another direction and the whole thing could fall apart

The word tentative is not one I'd interpret as pejorative in relation to this band. I take their whole aesthetic of minimalism and deliberation as being tentative, if that makes sense. And I'm enjoying this probbaly a little more than the debut so far.

i agree with j0rdan, the problem isn't so much with the sound they're going for or their overall slight aesthetic but...the thing with the debut is that the slightness and sparseness belied a real sturdiness to the songcraft and melodies, and that's just not here.

What do you mean by "the songcraft isn't here"? That is a near-meaningless statement without examples/elaboration.

Even then it's still massively subjective.

it's still possible to back up a subjective opinion so people have a clearer idea of where you're coming from; right now the overall impression I'm getting from everyone is "I don't like this album because it isn't 'Crystalised'"

My favourite tunes on the first album were "Heart Skipped A Beat" or "Shelter" or "Infinity" anyway, each going for quite a different feel within the xx's limited parameters. After the first track these tend to plough the same furrow, though that may change as I listen more.

stream
this is pretty impressive. they have this talent not to waste a second in their songs. they are unbelievably focussed and to the point. the music is heavy (serious & not really fun) and light (it breathes as the arrangements sound rather spare, they give the songs the air to evolve) at the same time. there is a richness in it i haven't heard for a while in new music. another proof that less can be more.

Crystalised / Martina Topley Bird, Mark Lanegan and Warpaint.

http://soundcloud.com/euan-me/crystalised

Great cover. But it doesn't beat the original

i agree.

New album is possibly the worst thing I've heard all year. Those lyrics! I think it probably uses about 3 chords throughout the entire album too. Unbearably boring

Just listened to the NPR stream, the one Alex linked above. Definitely a headphones album, in my case Koss UR40, sold for 40 bucks American. But they sound audiophile here, with Windows Media Player on 25, play it louder still and you won't be wrong. Love about half of it so far, mostly the first half. In the second half, so far I like the false endings, and the way jamie xx anxiously drops new toys in my crib just as I'm starting to get bored (nevertheless, things are otherwise getting predictable.) So the minimalist validation/tag's peeling off here. jamie should maybe just make us dance as xposted suggested, even in our headphones, but I guess I'll have to wait for the remixes. Agree that Oliver Sim doesn't groan too much here, he's cogent, but Romy Croft's voice is the one that holds me.

listening to this yet again, I'm kind of shocked by how out of tune Romy is in places

like, I know vocal precision isn't really her thing but Oliver was going with her more on the first album and wasn't generating really dissonant clashes on unison lines like he is here, where he's generally on pitch and she's flat

I stand by my earlier assessment that this album is the song "Shelter" refracted through 11 different prisms; since I really love "Shelter" I don't have a problem with this.

I agree that "Shelter" seems to be the jumping-off point they used to create this album, but I think it also illustrates the change in their approach to lyrics. I know in the p4k piece Romy mentioned she wanted to tone down the drama in the lyrics, but honestly, I think that was one of the self-titled strong points. The arguably OTT lyrics contrasted nicely with the muted music. There is nothing on Coexist that stands out and demands as much of my attention as "I'll cross oceans, like never before. So you can feel the way I feel it too".

I wld say this isn't as beat-driven as the first album is

Kind of was hoping it would be more beat-driven. Would have preferred "Islands" to be the jumping-off point.

btw Alfred OTM re: "Missing", it's great

it's officially my favorite song.

listening to this yet again, I'm kind of shocked by how out of tune Romy is in places

like, I know vocal precision isn't really her thing but Oliver was going with her more on the first album and wasn't generating really dissonant clashes on unison lines like he is here, where he's generally on pitch and she's flat

I stand by my earlier assessment that this album is the song "Shelter" refracted through 11 different prisms; since I really love "Shelter" I don't have a problem with this.

I agree with all of this.

i like "shelter" better than all the songs from this album. actually i struggle to choose 'stand-out tracks' on this one

"Chained", "Fiction", "Reunion", "Missing" and "Swept Away" are my standouts, with honorable mention to "Sunset"

so, most of them then? :)

i like missing but i still have probs with it and i feel like it could have been much much better without adding to its slightness. for one thing it should be longer with more "nothing" in it. i have a problem with the "an" in "my heart is beating in an different way" - is he trying to suggest indifferent by singing an different? if so it doesn't really work for me, just sounds awkward. if he's not doing that then i wonder why he's singing "an different" at all. romy's phrasing is a bit of a problem too. and yes, tuning problems even within their specific aesthetic.

this record still sounds like sketches to me but there's often something beautiful in a sketch that would have eradicated in a finished version so i'm (mostly) cool with that.

The guitar sound on this is killing me.

There's just this sad and aching fuzziness to it, the tone of that mandolin-plucked tremolo sound.

I want to know what kind of reverb they're using because they really do have that cathedral-sound going on on the guitar, it's a lovely contrast to the closeness and intimacy of the vocals. Like their lips are inches away from the mics, but the guitar amps are up on a mountainside somewhere.

this is pretty good considering they are just some english goth band

(delayed reaction in honour of the ~~reverb~~)

this record still sounds like sketches to me but there's often something beautiful in a sketch that would have eradicated in a finished version so i'm (mostly) cool with that.

giving this another listen after i'd left it behind thinking it was ~kinda nice~, i'm finding this sketch aspect of it really striking. i can't think of anything else that has the feeling of this, like we get these little shards of beauty but then they're immediately concealed or dissipate back into the greyness of it all. it's a bit disorienting and i'm not sure if it's something to be valued, but it's certainly interesting.

or maybe i just haven't slept enough.

When I saw them live a few months ago, there was a girl behind me who kept muttering "I hope they play [song x] ... I really hope they play [song x] ..." And then they would play song x - because they only have a couple of albums of short songs - and she would lose her shit and scream at the top of her lungs. Then she'd start muttering "I hope they play [song y] ..."

Every show ever tho

For sure, but this wasn't like going to a Depeche Mode show and yelling for "Enjoy the Silence." This was one show where the act was guaranteed to play *absolutely every song* she might have requested.

When I last saw Prince the two women behind me were yelling for "Raspberry Beret" is the most angry manner possible. "Play 'Raspberry Beret,' you motherfucker!!!" etc.

He played it, too. They were pretty happy with that.

this is my favourite album of theirs now. the unfished sound of it allows it to grow more.

reunion is particularly great, i think. the way it just tries being a different kind of song halfway through. lovely.