When Jamie Smith, Oliver Sim and Romy Madley Croft took the Coachella foremost stage on Friday night, you can be forgiven for forgetting the momentousness of the event. The trio referred to as the xx has not carried out collectively in eight years, save for a few warm-up exhibits in Mexico City forward of the California competition, although they’ve hardly been absent from the music scene. Smith, the renowned electronic producer referred to as Jamie xx, is now a competition mainstay, whereas Madley Croft and Sim have every constructed on the indie rock band’s signature haunted sound with their solo materials, 2023’s clubby Mid Air and 2022’s horror-tinged Hideous Bastard, respectively.
The three childhood pals nonetheless collaborate – Jamie produced Sim’s Hideous Bastard – and their long-awaited Coachella reunion, the primary outing of a deliberate competition run and “new chapter”, felt extra like peeking into an ongoing mind-meld than one of many buzziest units of the competition. The group appeared of their signature all-black and launched into their 2009 debut single Crystalised as if no time had handed.
Which is to not say it wasn’t transferring. Across practically an hour with 16 tracks that seamlessly blended their forward-thinking, intimate headphone rock with their respective solo materials, the xx delivered an impressively rangy and shapeshifting set befitting the veteran genre-bending act they’ve turn into. I’ll be the primary to confess that whereas the normal xx sound – atmospheric, intimate, with Madley Croft and Sim buying and selling pensive lyrics in haunting deadpan – is undeniably influential, it’s maybe not the perfect competition temper. It’s arduous to think about a Billie Eilish with out the xx’s distinctively spectral manufacturing (“their ‘hauntingness’ gets referenced at least every other session, without question”, prolific songwriter-for-hire Ryan Tedder as soon as said), although the band’s music usually feels anti-crowd. Luckily, the group has a virtuosic sense of vibe in addition to Jamie xx’s peerless manufacturing – even slow-burn tracks akin to VCR, from their self-titled 2009 debut, and 2017’s Say Something Loving, get a propulsive beat infusion, with hypnotic outcomes (and to the delight of some British accents I caught within the crowd).
Some Coachella competition programmer on the market has unbelievable instincts: the xx’s transformative set, which started in stately grayscale and bloomed into full-color strobe lights, was completely timed for sundown, nightfall staining the clouds rose-gold, then darkish, because the music shifted from pensive to membership. By dusk, Jamie xx’s prismatic manufacturing took middle stage for the exultant Treat Each Other Right, a looking remix of On Hold and a juiced-up model of Sim’s observe GMT, the singer having wandered into the group. But it’s by no means lower than a group effort – so effectively do Madley Croft and Sim’s aching vocals nonetheless pair collectively, so simply do they fold into Jamie’s spellbinding beats, that it’s arduous to inform the place the solo work ends and the band work begins.
An extra-pounding version of I Dare You, maybe the band’s most straightforwardly sunlit track, introduced the journey full circle, earlier than depositing audiences at the ultimate quantity, the sarcastically titled and immediately recognizable Intro. This set, Sim says in his precise intro, “has felt the most special after so long away”. Filmed as soon as once more in grayscale, the band tore into what has turn into their pop calling card as if rediscovering it anew, then deconstructed the hazy instrumental right into a thunderous bombast that ricocheted throughout the now darkish competition grounds. It felt each like an announcement of return and a reminder that what as soon as stays: the journey goes on and on.
