The Singles Jukebox

One day, they will run out of walls to lean against. Not today, though…

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[6.17]

Spencer Ackerman: Often times you’ll get a rock band throwing synthesizers onto rock songs. The xx are working on a synthesis instead, and it hasn’t sounded this organic since New Order.
[6]

Chuck Eddy: As dinky-beat UK retro-technopop with incompetent singing goes, better than some La Roux songs, maybe, but way worse than “Bullet Proof.” Though they do keep alive the Human League “Don’t You Want Me” tradition of the guy singer sounding so awful he makes the girl seem like Diana Ross in comparison. Except the xx’s girl makes the Human League’s girl seem like Diana in comparison, too.
[4]

Alfred Soto: The most bored couple in indiedom do their Hope Sandoval-Jim Reid act again, and they’re smarter than I’m giving them credit for: the metronomic pulse, twang guitar, and nonplussed vocals actually sound better the less you pay attention. Is that what all their fans do?
[5]

Martin Kavka: This is one of the more luxe tracks on this album — the guitar sometimes plays more than one note at a time! — but the fact that it’s relatively conventional doesn’t minimize the band’s talent for capturing that blazing confidence of late youth, when one claims to know oneself deeply because one has foregone all the trappings usually associated with adulthood.
[8]

Ian Mathers: It’s a testament to the xx’s firm grasp of mood and effect that they can make “I am yours now, so now I don’t ever have to leave” come across as playfully sultry and appealing rather than creepy or despairing. Like the rest of their debut, “Islands” is so low-key as to almost slink out of the room entirely, and that’s either a virtue or a vice depending on how you like your pop music. But you could probably listen to it ten times in a row without minding much, and if you do its subtle groove might win you over.
[7]

Anthony Miccio: I coincidentally revisited the tracks I’d kept from The Blow’s Paper Television this weekend, and while both groups benefit from spicing the amateur coziness of indie with R&B’s prominent bass and beats, the XX replace the former’s openly gawky yammer with hushed slurring that’s not as seductive as they think. Only when they stop talking into their shirts for the chorus – and shut up entirely for the climax – does this truly simmer.
[7]