Ludovic Dawney | Staff Writer
As my noticably unconvinced friends waited on Dame Street in the rain, my heart hammering, I explained to the bouncer I was on guest list. He directed me to a woman with a clipboard. I fully expected her to say, “No. Sorry. Can’t find your name” but incredibly, I was, and she actually produced the tickets. As we went through, we were directed not towards where the main crowd was going, but up some creaky staircase and towards wooden doors. I then looked down at my tickets, BOX it said in bold capital letters, and looked up again to see wide grins on my friends’ faces. And to think that two months ago, I didn’t think I would get any tickets at all.
I should explain. Back home in London, on reading week, I bumped into Caius Pawson, the manager of The xx. I made a beeline, chatted him up, and asked him if we could interview the band on my show of Trinity FM, Afternoon Delight. He politely declined, but I was more lucky with my follow-up question, to which he replied by offering me free tickets to The xx’s Dublin gig. He gave me his email address. Big mistake. In our correspondence, he asked me how many people I wanted to bring. I took a long time to reply, wondering how many would be rude to ask for. I settled for a bold ‘seven’, and he replied ‘Fine, it’s done’. What a dude.
Pawson began promoting clubs in London when he was 18. He was snatched up by XL, and found Young Turks a subsidiary record label. He has worked with the likes of Florence Welch, Jack Penate and SBTRKT. So not only very impressive young man, but a generous one as well. Our box was next to that of the parents of Mmoths, the warm-up act, who were very friendly. The mother said: ‘I loved it. You must have enjoyed it even more, being younger than us!’.
The xx early gigs were simple affairs, just with the band playing. It’s in essence their style: understated. All members only have black clothes in their wardrobes. Romy Madley-Croft, on guitar, and Oliver Sim, on bass, both sing with Jamie Smith, operating the beats behind. “The artwork is all something we do ourselves. It’s based around the theme of iridescence,” – only a Mercury prize winner can get away with such pseudery I sense – “and we try and keep that as a theme that goes into our live show with the music and the lighting we use,” Romy told Rolling Stone. A curtain showing the artwork from their ‘Angels’ video comes down at the start, and for the encore there is a large boxed x behind the band in which thick white smoke is filled.
During several instrumental parts of their songs, Romy and Oliver walk towards and face each other in an almost awkward way, completely lacking chemistry. It seems as if they have been commanded by one of the suits in order to make the performance more aesthetically interesting. .
The presenter Dermot O’Leary described the band as ‘painfully shy’. The most shy of all is Jamie, who, while the band were on a break, continued making music. Under his stage name Jamie xx, he produced a wonderful remix of ‘Rolling in the Deep’ by Adele, and recontextualised ‘I’m New Here’ by Gil Scot-Heron. He is the gem behind the band, influenced by RJD2 and interestingly Justin Timberlake. He operates an MPC, producing live beats during the shows. Some time in the future, he hopes to invent his own version of the music-producing machine.
The band beat Mumford & Sons to win the Mercury Prize for their self-titled debut album. Their second album ‘Coexist’ fails to suffer the difficult second album curse. The band are now clearly in the mainstream, with the vinyl of ‘Coexist’ being the most bought of 2012 and covering ‘Last Christmas’ on a free ‘Xxmas’ record. The lighting was cleverly executed, the songs well chosen. It was a shame they do not play their fantastic cover of ‘You’ve got the Love’ live. They only did it once, with Florence herself, at Glastonbury.
The band are so impressive that maybe they can be forgiven for the one mistake of the night – their exclaiming that Dublin was their favourite city “in the UK.”
The xx perform at the O2 on Wednesday 26th June.
