17 May Album Revisited: The XX – XX

The XX continue to tag the international concert scene with their iconographic marker XX, kicking off last week in Tokyo and whirlwind-ing Europe and the US for the next three months. Now a threesome since guitarist Baria Qureshi left the band last November, this all-black-clad crew was and still is one of the most exciting new bands on the UK music block, dropping last fall their first album on XL Records through Young Turks, soberly titled XX. You may want to box it as rock with or without the roll, indie... but who needs the clutter of boxes. Flowing through the barriers of music genres, they had mixed previously their unmistakable guitars’ vibrating-staccato-play and sung murmurs to covers of R&B tracks. See surprising and pitch-modified interpretations of Aaliyah's 'Hot like Fire' and Womack & Womack's 'Teardrops'.