Review | With their third album, The xx show a willingness to grow and diversify
How to grow without losing your identity? That was the challenge facing Mercury-winning band The xx, a challenge they’ve aced
I See You
Young Turks
Nearly eight years on from their critically acclaimed and commercially successful debut, Mercury Prize-winners The xx return with their third long player, and there’s a noticeable shift in the young Londoners’ rhetoric. Blessed with a uniquely minimal and seductive style, the indie-pop trio had seemingly reached a creative crossroads, having to work out how to become more musically adventurous while remaining true to their identity. I See You, the follow-up to 2012’s Coexist, is the sound of a band successfully embracing progress. Perhaps it was the worldwide success of Jamie xx’s 2015 solo debut, In Colour, that gave songwriters Romy Madley Croft and Oliver Sim a newfound confidence. “I felt like a fire was lit underneath me,” says Sim, and with brighter changes of pace and uplifting beats, this is certainly the band’s most diverse collection of tunes to date.
