(Young)
Expertly produced with Jamie xx, Fred Again and Stuart Price, Romy Madley Croft’s debut solo album tops off vivid house and trance tunes with pop smarts and personal lyrics
In an industry in which it’s held that the way to get ahead is to pump out an unceasing flow of releases – the better to keep your audience engaged in a world packed with distractions – there’s something perversely pleasing about the xx’s aloof reserve. Their last album came out more than six years ago; they last played live in 2018. They clearly haven’t split up – their social media is filled with recent photos of the trio in various combinations – but a follow-up to I See You looks a long way off. “Blink twice if you’re making new music,” posted one desperate fan beneath an Instagram clip of Oliver Sim and Romy Madley Croft cuddling on a Paris balcony.
Instead they have pursued solo careers – albeit that various members of the band have appeared on each other’s projects. The two albums that had previously resulted existed at different polarities. Jamie xx’s In Colour was a kaleidoscopic hymn to the pleasures of London clubs: old hardcore breaks, skipping two-step rhythms, samples of pirate radio MCs and tracks called Gosh and I Know There’s Gonna Be Good Times. At the other extreme was the shock of Sim’s Hideous Bastard. By some distance the least forthcoming member of a band seldom noted for their carefree loquaciousness, it turned out he had a great deal to say, albeit softly: the album was a self-baiting confessional; music as therapy, its songs rooted in the “shame and fear” he said he had felt since being diagnosed with HIV at 17.
Continue reading...by Alexis Petridis via Electronic music | The Guardian
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