A dirty dead-end in London’s Kings Cross is nobody’s idea of sanctuary. But on November 9, hours after Donald Trump’s victory was confirmed, escape lies at the end of this dark alleyway. In an upstairs rehearsal room, the xx are practicing for an imminent BBC performance; in a fortnight, they’ll travel to Croatia to kick off their first tour in more than two years. The group’s reemergence comes along with their third album, I See You, a record that knows something about surviving dark times. This evening, the outside world is well and truly banished.
They run a closed rehearsal, where producer Jamie Smith’s hulking crescent of synths are only audible through headphones. A single serene candle atop Romy Madley Croft’s guitar amp seems to mock the discarded cups littering the low-ceilinged room, bringing calm to a day of disbelief. “I try not to check my phone first thing, but…” Madley Croft trails off, looking down at her Siouxsie and the Banshees hoodie. “I thought it was a joke. I’m speechless.”
Not that the xx are an explicitly political band. Co-leads Oliver Sim and Madley Croft are both gay, and there’s an argument to be made for the xx providing a rare portrait of queer intimacy, though they prefer to see it as universal. In the rehearsal room, it’s easy to imagine them as teenagers in a South London garage: Sim the leader, Madley Croft the guide, Smith the silent sage.
“Let’s power through, and if something goes wrong, just let it happen,” says Sim. From his synth battalion, Smith triggers the vocal samples from “Gosh,” a single from his 2015 solo album, In Colour, which turned the band’s shyest member into its unlikely breakout star. Over the track’s chomping rhythm, Madley Croft starts singing “Shelter,” from the xx’s self-titled debut. The mash-up shouldn’t work. “Gosh” clatters, while an airy synth seems to trace the London skyline; “Shelter” quietly anguishes over vanishing sensations. But more than 16 years of friendship has led to a certain mind-meld, and the tracks fuse perfectly, Smith’s song heightening the desperation in Madley Croft’s lyrics. As the synths wind skyward, she sets down her guitar. Sim spontaneously extends a hand, and the singers turn a hug into a sway, spinning slowly until they return to their microphones for the song’s final lines.
“I like our slow dance for ‘Gosh’—let’s slow dance!” he tells her afterwards. She’s less convinced. They run through the song again, the pair dancing more purposefully this time, their clasped hands pointing out as her head rests in the crook of his neck. When they pull away, they hold on until their fingertips brush apart. “We’re gonna do that!” says Sim excitedly, poking Madley Croft’s middle with one finger and pointing at the floor with another.
It’s not Miley Cyrus’ inflatable hotdog, but this kind of showmanship—any kind of showmanship—doesn’t come easy to the xx. Before they attempt “Lips,” a downright lustful new song built around big drums and a haunting modern classical sample, Madley Croft asks Sim, “Should we face forward?” She then turns to me to apologize; I’m watching from a couch six feet away from their microphones. “We have to get used to facing forward and not looking at Jamie. I’ll look past you.” Faced with a painfully intimate audience, Madley Croft winces and recoils from the high notes.
When they first emerged, the xx’s appeal came from music that sounded as if it was directed towards an audience of one, from somewhere beneath rumpled bedclothes. The intimacy reflected their shared bond. They grew up together: Madley Croft and Sim played in the same sandpit as toddlers. Smith joined their gang at 11, when they started at the Elliott School in Putney, South London. After several years of making music individually in secret, they formed the xx in their final year.
The band looked perpetually shellshocked when they broke out as 20-year-olds in 2009. They won the Mercury Prize for their first album, which has sold nearly 1.7 million copies worldwide. Journalists mocked them for looking like “suburban goths.” They did, but it was less style choice than a reflection of their profound social anxiety.
“The Simpsons” creator Matt Groening has been an ardent fan since he picked them to play a festival he curated in 2010. “They averted their gaze, like a relationship that’s dead but hasn’t quite broken up,” he says with a deep laugh, recalling their performance. “However, they delivered the goods musically. They were just so young, and shy, I guess. It certainly wasn’t arrogance.”
I See You is a bold, rhythmic revamp. It’s their first album to use prominent samples, which Smith considers his voice. Opener “Dangerous” starts with a striking brass fanfare that immediately raises the stakes. (The first time I hit play, I thought I was listening to the wrong record.) Madley Croft and Sim now write together in a room as opposed to via email, and talk openly about their songs. As a result, they’re no longer singing past each other, but singing out, like ’80s dancefloor belters. In the past, their lyrics were always inside their heads, wishing, observing, never doing; on I See You, they dare and scream and test. “’Cause I couldn’t care less/If they call us reckless/Until they are breathless,” Madley Croft and Sim sing over ominous bass at the album’s start. “They must be blind.”
The day before rehearsals, the xx are camped out in their label XL’s homey West London headquarters. Their publicist slides back the door to the stylish lounge where they’ve been cooped up all day. In the corner of the giant sofa, the black-clad trio are slumped on top of each other like a pile of puppies. They spring apart and stand to shake hands.
Trying to discuss these strident lyrics in the lounge is a different matter, met mostly with hesitant platitudes about growth. We briefly broach quarter-life crises and Saturn returns, which traditionally occur around their age: Smith is now 28, Sim and Madley Croft 27. Sim nods enthusiastically—just yesterday he was discussing the astrological phenomenon with his mum.
For him, writing lyrics has been less about observing, more “working off actual things that have happened.” Like? “Reaching an age where being the drunkest person in the room isn’t charming anymore.”
From the torturous process of making their second album, 2012’s uneven Coexist, the xx knew that they had to escape their comfort zone for the follow-up. (“Our comfort zone is a very small place,” says Madley Croft, perhaps unnecessarily.) They recorded that album in a studio that Smith built behind a McDonald’s in North London, and didn’t let anyone else hear it until they had to. “There was so much pressure from ourselves about: What do people like about us? What makes us sound like us? What do we need to hang onto?” says Sim. “When we’re thinking like that, at our worst, we can end up sounding a bit like a parody of ourselves.” They abstained from letting themselves eat at McDonald’s until they completed the album. Some reward.
This time around, they had a vague plan to record in far-flung places. In March 2014, they brought an ambitious residency to Manhattan’s Park Avenue Armory. These were far from normal shows: Only 45 people attended each one, even though the hangar-like space could hold hundreds more. “On the very last show we did, I looked up and saw Madonna staring at me in a very long, fur-type coat,” says Madley Croft with disbelief. “I was trying not to stare at her, like, How am I supposed to perform? Am I supposed to bring it more now because Madonna’s staring at us?”
They recorded a bit at the Armory, and then in Marfa, Texas, and Iceland. These early sessions overlapped with the making of Smith’s In Colour, on which Sim and Madley Croft made guest appearances, ceding all control to their bandmate. It led to the xx scrapping their old rule that everything they recorded had to be playable live, opening up unseen possibilities. In a further effort to break out of their own self-imposed bubble, co-manager and close friend Caius Pawson established “group therapy” sessions where they would review their work every month or so, playing it to guests like Four Tet’s Kieran Hebden, Sampha, and Savages’ Jehnny Beth.
That November, they took a five-day road trip down the West Coast to Los Angeles, joined by Pawson and Rodaidh McDonald, who co-produced the new album alongside Smith. They all introduced each other to tons of music: Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk and Rumours, Heart’s “Magic Man,” Ace’s “How Long,” Arthur Russell’s First Thought, Best Thought, soft rock twins the Alessi Brothers, and primitive guitarist Robbie Basho.
L.A. was about having fun and bringing that feeling into the new record. But, as McDonald admits, “Perhaps parts of that trip went a little too far.” There was a lot of drinking and partying. They rented a Hollywood mansion and worked on songs like Sim’s “Replica,” a desperate missive about trying to break away from your own self-destructive history. They went to Miley Cyrus’ birthday party, and invited too many people back to their place afterwards. “There were a few arguments,” says McDonald. “It was the point where we had to take a step back and remember that we were working on an album.”
When that session was over, the band went their separate ways for a while. Madley Croft stayed behind in L.A. to experiment in the pop hit factory, knowing the unfamiliarity would be horrible—but that was the point. She wrote with artists like Rhye’s Robin Hannibal and OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder. “I’ve been referencing the xx sonically for three or four years in writing sessions,” says Tedder, who has worked with nearly every modern pop star that matters, including Taylor Swift and Beyoncé. “And their ‘hauntingness’ gets referenced at least every other session, without question.”
Smith was busy touring and finishing In Colour. Sim stayed at home in London and started to spiral. The trips were meant to consolidate the band, but during the gaps between recording, doubts began to form.
It’s usually a bad sign when band members travel separately, but in London in late November, three days before the xx are due to start their tour in Croatia, individual taxi journeys and pub assignations are the only way to crack their monstrous schedule. They seem embarrassed of the fuss. The day starts early, riding with Sim from an upscale deli near his home in Hackney, East London, to a photo shoot. Since we last met, the band made their charmingly awkward debut on “Saturday Night Live,” where they appeared alongside Kristen Wiig, a shared hero, and tried not to smell her hair when they recorded promos for the show. They all say the actress made them feel more at ease, and it turns out the feeling was mutual. “I was so happy that they played ‘SNL’ when I was hosting,” says Wiig. “It felt like a little gift to calm my nerves and also lose myself a bit during a night when you don’t stop running around.”
Sim feels good about the upcoming shows, he says decisively. They will be among the first he’s ever played sober. In 2014, when he came home from touring Coexist, he realized that he lacked some fundamental life skills, like scheduling and self-care. “I was going out a lot with the excuse that I was celebrating—‘celebrating’—the past few years.” He curls his fingers and raises his eyebrows. “Just fighting the idea of becoming an adult. Some friends had started to mellow a bit, and I didn’t want to.” He feared responsibility and accountability. “And with alcohol, like a lot of things, it’s all or nothing for me. So right now it’s just nothing.” It’s been just over a year since his last drink.
The car pulls around the back of St. Paul’s Cathedral. “I was the last person to think that I wasn’t drinking… successfully,” he demurs, speaking in considered fragments. “Everyone had voiced their opinions.” He listened. “But the problem was that I was, I suppose, distancing myself, so I thought, How would they know?”
I tell him that sounds pretty telltale.
“Yeah,” he says, his soft, South London accent dropping even lower. “That’s real telltale. Romy and Jamie confronting me independently was… the last straw.”
He had also started to feel insecure about his contribution to the band. “Never mind that I wasn’t leading a very healthy lifestyle,” he says, growing quieter. “The fact that I wasn’t being creative hit harder—and kidding myself that I felt more creative with a drink in me.”
In the months between recording sessions, as his friends were working on their own projects, he became paranoid about their relationships, based on his own interpretations of texts and emails. “When you haven’t seen someone for a while, it’s so easy to project and make your own ideas about what’s going on,” he says. “I always feel like the two of them are a step in front of me in confidence and maturity. I worried that they were going in a slightly forward direction, and I wasn’t.”
He laughs at the suggestion that he seems like the most confident member of the band, recalling an old story about Smith: As young teenagers walking home from school, Smith once turned to Sim and said, “I’m at peace with the fact that I’m not going to make big waves in the world.” Sim laughs at the memory. “I was like, ‘That is the most depressing thing I’ve ever heard. Aim for the stars?!’ Now, Jamie’s silently confident, he’s a solid, solid guy.” He rhapsodizes about Madley Croft’s drive too. “She’s the perfect example of, ‘If something scares me, I’m going to do it for the sake of growth.’ I don’t think it’s in her nature to lean into discomfort, but she does it.” He rolls the sleeve of his coffee cup up and down his palm. “And I’m just trying to find my confidence a bit.”
Right now, talking to strangers scares him the most; the bravado he felt as a younger man has been replaced by social anxiety. But there’s an upside to this awkwardness. “The times when I actually do have, like, a successful conversation, I feel really good about it and it stays with me as opposed to… kind of not remembering,” he says. “While I’m struggling more now, I am actually happier.” That said, he’s also wondering about what happens when the album comes out. “One thing I can’t wrap my head around, to be honest, which makes me a bit sad, is: How do I celebrate and let go a bit? Which I’m still figuring out. I’ve got lots of help.”
There was no big reconciliation. Madley Croft and Smith came home to finish the album in London in early 2015. They had all worried about growing distant from one another but realized nothing had really changed between them—just that after decades of friendship, they still had to work at communicating. “I’ve noticed that you can save some of your harshest moments for the people you love,” Sim says. “I feel like with me and Romy and Jamie—but especially me and Romy—it is so easy for feelings to get hurt. Because Romy knows exactly how to push my buttons with a short sentence, and likewise with her.”
Coexist closed with “Our Song,” the xx’s love letter to each other. “All I have, I will give to you,” they sang, echoing traditional wedding vows. Knowing now how difficult the recording of that album was, the lines sound like damage control, glossing over a torrid situation. Sim agrees. In contrast, I See You ends with “Test Me,” a song about the band that’s so brutal, it could only have been written from solid foundations. Madley Croft wrote all the lyrics and turned her back to Sim when she first played it to him. “Just take it out on me/It’s easier than saying what you mean,” she sings, unwavering. “Test me, see if I break/Tell me this time you’ve changed/Test me, see if I stay/How could I walk the other way?”
Sim exhales and laughs, recalling the moment. “It was hard, but we had a hug. It was good for me to hear.”
Several hours later, the band’s publicist delivers Madley Croft to a West London pub. While she was away in L.A., she didn’t initially realize how bad things were with Sim. “You have a best-friend intuition that he’s not really 100 percent, but there’s a point where everyone’s drinking and it’s quite easy to not realize if someone’s actually not in a good place with it.” She hesitates. “As with any friend going through anything, it really affected me because I care so much about him and I just want him to be happy.”
I See You sounds like a confrontational title, though it’s meant as a kindness, taken from a line in the Velvet Underground’s “I’ll Be Your Mirror”: “Please put down your hands/’Cause I see you.” “A friend can sometimes see you better than you can see yourself,” says Madley Croft. “There were so many times when I wanted to tell Oliver—and I tried—‘You’re amazing and there are so many things that are great about you.’ Sometimes you have to find that yourself. And I really feel like he has done that, which I’m really proud of him for.”
For Madley Croft, the main theme since Coexist has been coming to terms with her parents’ deaths. Her mum died when she was 11, her dad when she was 20 and on tour in Paris. Two weeks later, the xx had their biggest gig to date at London’s Shepherds Bush Empire, which she played to honor his support of the band. A month later, she lost a cousin who was more like a sister. “These crazy highs and lows,” she recalls. But the highs were a great comfort to my family, and for me.” In a cruel irony, her unresolved grief resurfaced during a contented period of downtime while making the new record.
“Brave for You” is the first time she’s written about her parents. “Though you’re not here/I can feel you there/I take you along,” she sings over Smith’s shuddering washes. It ends on a pained note: “There are things I wish I didn’t know/I try my best to let them go.” She praises Smith for making her heartbroken demo into something more celebratory. Usually she leaves her family to listen to new xx music without her, but she recently sat down and played them the whole album.
By throwing herself into the things that once scared her, Madley Croft has emerged fearless. “Which is nice because I used to feel uncomfortable calling for room service—they’re strangers!” she laughs. “That’s quite extreme! But now it’s not a problem.”
The publicist returns with Smith and a waiting cab driver. The car will drop off Madley Croft for dinner with her girlfriend, and take Smith to a friend’s Thanksgiving celebration. They grab five minutes together, dissecting Smith’s impending move. Tomorrow he’s leaving his longstanding home in the busy central hub of Old Street for quieter Clapton, in East London. In less than 36 hours, they’ll be on the plane to Croatia. This morning, they put a record-breaking seven nights at the 5,000-capacity Brixton Academy on sale. It’s now 6:30 p.m., and they’re all sold out.
Although Smith is the oldest member of the xx, he says he feels the least mature. His big personal breakthrough has been learning “to try and talk about everything, which I never used to do, and nobody in my family did, either.” He’s more open than he once was, though he still answers questions with the reticence of a boy being asked what he did at school that day. “It makes me feel good, even if I’m saying something that is not necessarily making me look good. The fact that Romy and Oliver will listen, and I will listen to them, is really comforting.”
His confidence slips out via a few offhand comments and wryly raised eyebrows. Of their “SNL” performance, he says they were all excited to meet Kristen Wiig—though he’d already met her in 2012, when she turned up at one of his sets in New York City. I rib him about there being none of his trademark steel drums on I See You, and he cracks a wry smile: “Justin Bieber’s doing tropical house.” And of the dance purist backlash against In Colour, he says he understands their grievances. Ultimately, though, “I’ve played the biggest clubs in the world, so…”
When Smith was touring In Colour, he had to be told that his bandmates were feeling distant from him, “which is often the way,” he says. But he was keenly aware of Sim’s issues with alcohol. “It was a learning curve for everyone,” says Smith. “They say that you have to realize for yourself, and he did, and he was so good about it. It felt very grown-up, much more grown-up than I felt.”
Manager Caius Pawson says Smith, “a classic stoic Englishman,” underestimates himself. “Jamie was the glue in that period. He would come back from touring and be the one who’d go out and rescue people. For someone like Jamie, who’s still trying to piece together his own emotional map, that was a tremendous amount of pressure. Just because someone hasn’t quite worked out how to access their own emotions doesn’t mean they’re incapable of dealing with other people’s emotions.”
One song that didn’t make the new record was “Naive,” in which Sim surprised his bandmates by writing more honestly than he was willing to be in real life. “Everyone’s trying to save me/Can’t they see I’m having fun?” he sings, filled with sarcasm and self-loathing. “Something’s wrong, but I choose to be naive.” In response, Smith sampled a line from a Drake song: “That’s the wrong thing to do.”
Zagreb, Croatia’s Boćarski Dom is a run-down sports hall by day and an even less auspicious venue by night. There are no bathrooms. Outside, by the thorough security search stations, there’s a wall of unlit Porta Potties—a bracing experience in 35 degree weather. A bootlegger sells some fantastically misguided T-shirts depicting the xx styled like “Family Guy” characters. You can smoke indoors, and everyone does.
In preparation for the band’s set, two stagehands spray and brush the stage meticulously, like a one-sided curling team. A black cloth comes off Smith’s giant plexiglass setup, which resembles a bar that Carrie Bradshaw would visit in the earliest seasons of “Sex and the City.” The bottom two feet of the unit are mirrored, reflecting the first few rows—the xx want fans to know they can see them.
At 9:33, the lights drop. The bass ricochets around the venue’s bare brick walls. Madley Croft and Sim bob around each other theatrically. They stand at the front of the stage and stare down the crowd, ignoring the fans who are waggling copies of In Colour for them to sign. When the glacial synths of “Brave for You” strafe the room, the stage floods red, and Smith’s transparent box flashes wild white lights. It’s thunderous and undaunted. As soon as Madley Croft delivers her heartbreaking final lines, bows and stands back, Sim rushes over to hug her tight.
Just as he did in the Kings Cross rehearsal room, Smith starts up the “Gosh”/“Shelter” mash-up. “And I’ll cross oceans, like never before/So you can fe-el the way I feel it too,” Madley Croft belts. Her slow dance with Sim finally gets its public debut. Grinning, he swoops across the stage, places one hand on her back, rests his head on hers, and they sway.
