London indie pop duo The xx’s self-titled 2009 debut made waves almost instantly. The 11-track record was full of songs which, if at times amorphous, turned producer Jaime xx’s (James Thomas Smith) less straightforward electronic repertoire into a more easily palatable collection of would-be late-night anthems. This was the record that spawned “Crystalised,” “Islands,” and “Heart Skipped a Beat,” three songs which, at the time, seemed to show up in ads every commercial break.
I See You, The xx’s newest outing, turns away from the sleek, now-clichéd kind of aesthetic that filled the soundtrack to Nicholas Winding Refn’s Drive in favour of a more grounded record. Opener “Dangerous” sets an oddly European mood to the record which is slowly contemporized over the track’s four-minute runtime, giving way to a bevy of influences which are all homogenized into The xx’s signature half-indie, half-R&B production.
“Lips,” for example, is one of the more energetic (or at least upbeat) tracks on the record. A siren that could also be a ridiculously muted trumpet snakes its way around vaguely tropical percussion, setting the background for a more contemporary track, which, although it falls under the same aesthetic constraints as modern R&B, manages to avoid using overly-recycled conventions. Other tracks, like “Brave For You” however, rely too much on overproduced soundscapes to make up for what could have been both a more ambitious vocal performance, and a more effective and vivid display of lyricism.
Instrumentally, The xx have it down: their individual sound is (and since their debut has been) distinct, while evidently moving forward on I See You. On tracks like “On Hold,” Smith’s production work leans over into pop, borrowing a mainstream affection for hooks based on essentially nothing more than repetition. Normally that would be grounds for criticism, but as it’s not a technique that’s overused throughout the record, Smith gets away with it.
This said, there are still various tracks on the record (both upbeat and more measured ballads) which fall flat when compared to the rest of the material on the album. “Test Me,” for example, is overly spacious, and given that I See You is a record that’s more or less built around either tight hooks or melodic phrases incorporated throughout songs, it’s strikingly underwhelming both in the context of the record, and as a stand-alone release (which it wasn’t).
One of the best tracks on the record, “Performance” highlights singer Romy Madley Croft’s vocal range. Bookended by the more rambunctious “A Violent Noise” and the sleepy “Replica,” “Performance” succeeds in keeping us interested despite its relatively simple construction; something album closer “Test Me” entirely fails to do, acting more as white noise at the end of the record than a track of its own.
I See You moves past some of the aesthetic constraints that held The xx back on 2012’s Coexist, but still struggles to move out from the shadow of the band’s 2009 debut.
