The xx – xx
20-year-old Londoners The xx seem poised as the next big, stylish act to come out of nowhere and catch everybody’s ear: their simple but highly original sound is composed of basic, New Order style drum machine beats slowed down to a crawl and mixed with dark guitars, deep bass, and hooky, smokey, sexy boy/gir vocals reminiscent of modern R&B (the album’s iTunes bonus track is a cover of an Aaliyah song); history would caution us against putting too much hype into such a band lest they collapse under it’s weight, but xx is a very strong album and one of the most promising debuts of the year.
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