The XX

I feel like every review of this album is the worst and i don't know whether to hold that against the music or feel sorry for it.

I feel like this bit of the RA review sums up the whole problem:

What we're left with is an uneven album that's rarely as profound or as meaningful as it tries to be. In Colour's core thread of raver nostalgia simply dissolves on contact. If he had anything enlightening or unique to add to his misty-eyed tributes, it'd be different, but he seems content to slip out a stream of clichés and call it a day.

Really? How does the writer know it's trying to be profound or meaningful? You get this a lot in dance music criticism, especially amongst committed partisans who just FEEL, very strongly and passionately, that the music of Pinch/Logos/Moodymann (delete as applicable) has more "depth" than the music of Disclosure/Jamie XX/Hot Creations/"wine bar house", but they literally cannot articulate why. At least garden variety rockism has a set of rules that can broadly be adopted to justify the writer's prejudices, no matter how wrongheaded they may be. These guys don't, so they end up throwing around inane criticisms like "club music for the neoliberal age" that miss the mark altogether.

I suspect it expresses exactly the feeling Jamie xx was going for: a little bit sad, a little bit hopeful. He doesn't strike me as a guy with broad emotional bandwidth.

I'm buying this album on the strength of the singles, the Romy track is soooo soothing. Don't know anything about Jamie's ambitions but if he was trying to make a soul sampling hit with some 90s house vibes that was a lot more cheery than the xx debut then to me he succeeded.

this is not a pop album other than the fact that jamie xx is somewhat well-known in the mainstream. too easy for idiots to set up a false pop v snob binary and to position themselves on the correct pop side. except this album doesn't work as pop (other than the popcaan/thugger anomaly) and mostly doesn't set out to

It isn't particularly pop, although large bits of it are straining for the anthemic, but then again so does lots of underground music. Otherwise it doesn't seem to be positioning itself anywhere radically different from, say, Four Tet, or that Caribou album from last year (although both are more accomplished as producers than Jamie is).

I don't particularly get the charge of "rave nostalgia" either given that his two signature sounds (that spindly XX sound and that bright synth steel pan noise) don't have an enormous amount to do with rave (of any era) either.

Maybe the problem is that there isn't an enormous amount of interest to say about most of the music here, but because of who he is it demands a disproportionate number of column inches that people then fill with these convoluted false ideological positions?

It's far more a pop record in that you would expect to hear the songs on radio than in a club.

Worth a mention for the "Gosh" video, which is a whole sight better than it has any need to be. Superb direction by Erik Wernquist reprising the style of his Wanderers short i.e. extensive use of NASA/Goddard Center etc images with overlaid VFX, this thing really is beautiful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjNssEVlB6M

too easy for idiots to set up a false pop v snob binary and to position themselves on the correct pop side.

I don't think that's what's happening. The snobbery runs through the reviews like lettering in a stick of rock but that doesn't mean there's only one "correct" answer. You could write a vicious takedown of this album's aesthetic and production without resorting to tired cliches about lifestyle music.

too easy for idiots to set up a false pop v snob binary and to position themselves on the correct pop side.

nu borad description?!?

Oh my god, shut up.

too many critics desperate to either tie the record into the 'nuum, or strawman against it, are building their arguments pretty heavily on those pirate rado samples from 'gosh' (and on the single from last year that's not on here), because it's not a very rave-y record as matt says. didn't four tet stop doing interviews because everyone did the same thing re the samples on his last record and would ask him about literally nothing else?

I like this. the xx never did anything for me - texture thing, I guess.

The album's OK. I don't know how this is compared to other club music; if anything, this is something to play after leaving the clubs. This is way too downtrodden to dance to, unless one has just ingested mescaline.

I like this album. The vinyl version is very low output / volume though - wonder if this is an audiophile choice for less compression more dynamics or a pressing mistake?

The vinyl is abnormally quiet. So much so that I thought something was wrong with my stereo the first time I played it.

This thread covers same topic http://www.reddit.com/r/vinyl/comments/3bbj0k/in_colour_by_jamie_xx_has_anyone_else_had_issues/

This review too (although on 3lp version (wtf)) http://www.amazon.com/review/R2V0SFWOIDFIMN/ref=cm_cr_dp_title?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B00V9MQZRK&channel=detail-glance&nodeID=5174&store=music

Young Turks records responded to me and said the plant pressed a bad batch and unfortunately those are in the wild. Buy at your own risk, you may get a garbage one and even the ones you exchange it for are from the same batch.

Glad it came with a cd but ffs maybe I should just stop buying new records

it is definitely frustrating that buying vinyl can be such a crap shoot and there aren't a lot of reliable sources to let you know what to expect from this or that album or pressing

yup, and it was expensive too, 30 euros! probably because of the "fun" cover with holes in it...

loving "Hold Tight"... arpeggio that appears midway through recalls "loner" by Burial, wonder if it's sampled.

mmmh this record is really good, get's a bit boring around the middle but then I jsut skip "Hold Tight", maybe

In Colours is very popular music at my office - great fortune!

hmm *COLOUR* I guess...

I have to say, the initial shine of this album has worn off. It was in my running for album of the year, but it just got kind of old. Maybe I overplayed it.

imo it is overall a pleasant album without much substance to it, was very weird to see the widespread acclaim for it. been a few months since i played it though

Recently realized that a big part of what makes "Loud Places" a great song to me is - and this was p obv once I realized it but anyway - it's use of space - like the song creates the silent/condensed/claustrophobic and loud/dissolving(agoraphobic?) places it depicts - at once subtle and obvious, I think it's very efficient, adds credibility to Romy's melancholy tale, universal in its metaphor, specific in it's spatiality

so while "Good Times" is the better jam, I think "Loud Places" is a good choice for eoy lists

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_oA9UmRd4I

new song is probably better than anything on coexist or in colour

remarkable, this song has a pulse, did someone finally give these guys some coffee before their recording sessions?

In Colour was a really good record, not feelin this hard on 1st listen, too many directions, but maybe it will grow on me

I suspect that Jamie is not the somnambulist in the group. I'm wondering if his success has driven them in a more beat-oriented direction.

Moodles, go back to "Intro", "Crystalised", "Islands", "Night Time", "Chained", "Sunset", "Swept Away"; there has always been a pulse in their music.

it's definitely in the direction of In Colour but thankfully doesn't have the heavy clunkiness of the drums on that album which was my real issue with it

DJP, I know that element has been there before, but I wish there was more of that, especially more tunes like "Islands". It felt like on Coexist they were favoring the more spare or dirge-like aspects of their music.

They were, but not on every song; go back to "Missing" for example.

On first listen, I find this new song bland and uninspiring.

I like it. I really love this band though. The sound is so distinct.

this is....interesting~

Sounds good but somehow they seem to have given up their trademark: the interplay of claustrophoby and open spaces.

song is mediocre, this can't be a single? hope we have a new thread for the album but doesn't seem to be ILM's way anymore. sad.

you could always...start one

This is their best song, but then again I've found virtually everything they've released up until now a massive chore to get through.

This is growing on me. Seems like having a sample/instrumental post-chorus is a trend in modern pop huh? Right now I can only think of this song and "Lean On" but I feel like I've been hearing it a lot in the past couple of years.

Ah yeah also Sorry by Bieber does it... thar's a big one... also several Chainsmokers songs... too lazy to go thru the charts of the previous years but it does feel like a trend that I very rarely heard before.

that's been a pretty defining trait of edm pop this decade

New song is so naff although I guess the guy's singing has improved.

Suspect the dude's improved singing is actually a turn-off for some listeners: no longer sounds like he's singing in the middle of a large, cold, totally dark room.

Not digging this on first listen - I didn't like In Colour much, and this is definitely further in that direction. I mean, when you're sampling one of the best songs of all-time I expect better than "meh"

Oh wow went to check the sample and hadn't realized it's Hall & Oates. In their defense the sample is modified heavily enough that is not instantly recognizable. I like that there's a part of the song with guitars before the sample enters (while he sings the chorus and shortly after) that kind of sounds like The Field. It's a huge blue balls moment tho... I kind of expect a drop the bass moment after hearing that sound and it goes straight into the post chorus that doesn't sound like a particularly cathartic moment.

I know it's their kind of style but this might be my problem with this song. Too many things in it are right but they never release the tension they build. It goes from one section to the next but it never explodes... which wouldn't be a problem normally but if they're going to go for a more commercial sound they need this sort of moments. Oddly enough in their debut they did knew how to release the tension by repeating a formula of introduce chorus +!drop beat + introduce new guitar figure... sometimes they would stay there until the song was over.

The new song is making me retroactively like "VCR", weirdly.

"VCR" was always my favorite from the first record!

i would love to hear this w/o the sample. it's pretty good as it is but it still feels to me like a slightly awkward meshing of the xx with jamie's solo work. or like they're trying to be cut copy. there's some version of the song that walks right to the edge of the release the sample provides but doesn't give into it, and that's the one i'd be most interested in hearing.

The first album is lovely imho. It takes the economical approach of a band like Young Marble Giants and updates it with the missing decades of pop music. It is of course not as mindblowing as YMG because it doesn't feel as new or transgressive as Colosal Youth in context but you can do a hell lot worse than YMG as one of your main influences.