Out and About -- The xx at Pianos, NYC, 12-Aug-2009

My own last minute awareness of this show, combined with a bizarre "wait list" situation at the door fueled by baffling blog-hype, meant that I only saw one band of the four on this bill. And that band consisted of four wan, slightly fey English kids. This evening could have been a complete trainwreck, but instead it was pretty fantastic.

The xx evokes an odd early 80s melange, drifting between Eyeless In Gaza, early Depeche Mode and Cure, hints of Human League, and even Young Marble Giants. Live rhythm box/drum machine, bass, guitar, and then gtr or synth, with switches of male and female vox that evoke gothic moonlit walks through the woods without being "goth." The sonic sparseness and fragility allows imaginations to run wild until crashing into an unfamiliar riff or break. I want them to work up a cover of Joe Crow's "Compulsion" -- and that's a compliment to both the original song and the future cover.

Sadly, the music making the blog rounds doesn't always capture what the live set featured. Some of those recordings and rips and demos work, but others feel compressed. The music isn't exactly "remix ready" but that hasn't stopped the hype-mongers from pursuing that route, either.  I hope that the album captures the sparseness and spaciousness -- they would honestly benefit from a Steve Albini recording session. The sound needs to be clean, unprocessed, straight-forward -- minimizing the studio trickery and overproduction that would deflect attention from the spacious performances.

Pianos captured the sonic quality requirements perfectly, while I fear that Friday's show at South Street Seaport will obscure the music with too many distractions. It's not like the band has a dynamic, active stage presence -- but the songs have talons that don't let go until the next one is ready. The set was barely 30 minutes and could have been 130 minutes for all I cared. Definitely worth hunting down, and I'll see what I can do about reviewing the album whenever I can scare up a copy.