The XX's songs are delicate creatures, partially preserved and on display. The guitars jut like bones through their paper thin flesh, picked out here yet covered in a Carbon film there. I don't want to move my head whilst listening to this in my headphones as if the slightest of tilts might disturb the music, disintegrating it and causing it to blow away. Surrounding the remains of these songs are the hushed boy/girl vocals, suspended flecks of dust glittering golden in the rare shafts of light, hanging like a last breath attempting to circulate through the perforated bodies. The vocals encapsulate the remaining life in these empty shells, drawing out the sorrow of never achieving anything again or realising the dreams that were always just around the corner. The album itself represents the museum housing this decay. It is quiet, no matter how loud you turn it up, it's still quiet. The kind of quiet that fills huge empty spaces and swallows sound. Whispers die on the lips and anything more than a whisper dare not materialise. It's not quiet because there's an absence of sound, it's quiet because it's supposed to be. It gives room for the individual strands of the songs to be appreciated, allowing the listener to absorb them, breath them in and encircle or be encircled by them.
The percussion is simple and rare and serves only to support the melancholic plucks of guitar and vocal harmonies. It does, however, add an unexpected groove to the songs offering a shuffling lurch that binds these moments to the ground rather than letting them float through the aether un-anchored.
The lyrics suggest young and innocent love but the instrumentation betrays the hope and naivety of it all. It's subtle, fragile and vulnerable in a way that can only be understood by someone who has lived through a relationship that is so encompassing it feels like it's reached into their chest and wrapped its petaled fingers around their heart so tightly it might burst at any moment. Only afterwards can they see that what they had was as fleeting and intangible as the butterfly kisses they'd been enjoying the summer before.
Whether you buy into the isolated decay or the innocent love it's going to make you feel in equal parts like you're witnessing something that has been beautiful but now is lost. The consolation is that you will have this forever and whilst its contents are temporary, its body will last. Perfectly preserved whether you put it in a glass case or not.
I leave you with this track, it's the first on the album so you can listen to it, decide you love it and click on the rest of the album on Spotify without tampering with the order. Just two minutes and seven seconds was enough to ensnare me.
The XX - Intro
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