When the band return to Australia, they will be playing their own headline shows, and doing so under cover of darkness. “I’m really excited to be coming back,” Madley Croft says. “We’re really excited about the new show. We’ve spent a lot of time on getting it just right.” Of particular interest is the band’s new lighting setup. “It sort of reflects the artwork for Coexist – it’s a very engaging part of the show, and I think it adds to the experience,” Madley Croft continues. “It brings something new, and it’s something that you wouldn’t get just from listening to the album. We’re very happy, first of all, that we get to come back and play in the dark, but also that we get to show off this cool and beautiful thing to people.”
As far as their live show is concerned, The xx are very conscious of the need to constantly evolve and change. Anyone who’s seen them more than once will know that the songs are ever-shifting and changing beasts, with new and surprising elements coming out in every performance. “That’s one of the things we really try to do,” Madley Croft says. “We were rehearsing today, working on various different versions of the songs, working on connecting passages to blend them all together. We always want to put on a different show to what people would have seen the last time we came. We want to keep evolving, and to keep it interesting for ourselves as well as the people who come to see us.”
The xx’s second album, Coexist, was released last year to great acclaim, and Madley Croft tells me that the inspiration behind its title came from a very peculiar place. “What happened is that one day, we saw a puddle of oil and water on the ground,” she explains. “It was really beautiful, and I spent a long time staring at it, because I was really fascinated by the rainbow on the surface. I wondered why it was that way, so I researched it, and found that oil and water don’t mix, they coexist – that’s where the name of the album came from. The artwork for the album reflects that effect, that iridescence. I love the idea that these two things that don’t mix can still create something very beautiful.”
Madley Croft shares vocal duties in The xx with her friend Oliver Sim, their voices intertwining to haunting effect on the band’s gossamer-fine songs. One particularly striking thing about their songs is the ambiguity of the lyrics – they sing about love and loss and heartbreak, but do so without ever mentioning gender. This does not happen by accident. “We don’t like the lyrics to be too specific,” she explains. “We like the idea that the songs are about ‘you and I’. Whether you’re a boy or a girl, and whether you like boys or girls, you can fit yourself into the songs. We never mention places or times for that reason. We like to keep it quite open to interpretation.”
While The xx could generally be considered a shy bunch, Coexist sees them coming out of their shells a little – some of its tracks, like Sunset and Reunion, even hint at a love of clubbing and house music. “I’ve always loved those things,” Madley Croft explains, “but we were on tour so much between the ages of 19 and 22 that I never got to do them. “When we came back from touring and had our time off, we caught up with our friends and went out a lot and did normal stuff. Jamie spent a lot of that time DJing, and he got really into house music at that point, and I guess I did too. It just felt very natural to start putting those sorts of sounds into our music. It’s fun for us. Our live show has developed into something much more upbeat, which is also a lot of fun for us.”
A short while ago, a sample of The xx’s song Intro showed up on the Rihanna track Drunk On Love. While you wouldn’t make any immediate connection between the two artists, The xx were thrilled to hear their music in this new context. “We’re such fans of Rihanna’s,” Madley Croft says, “and when it came out, we were really excited. She’s one of the artists who inspired us when we were younger – she and Beyoncé. It’s such a different way of making music, when you get to that massive pop star level – it’s very different from what we know – and it felt very interesting to be a part of that. We’d love to write for pop stars like that one day.”
BY ALASDAIR DUNCAN
