The place: a wind-swept and lonely bus stop in Canberra's "parliamentary triangle" (kind of like a love triangle but without the love). The time: a late-wintery dusk.
The 5:40pm bus to Woden either had been cancelled or was running early. (I hate it when buses run early. It means most people will miss it, and that means the next one will be late and/or overcrowded.) Thus the lonely public-transport user (i.e. me) had time to listen to the entirety of the debut album by The xx, called "xx". Even in the unregulated critical Wild West of the Internet, the hype bestowed on this record has been remarkable. There is no way that the thing itself could live up to it. And, unsurprisingly, it doesn't. Quite. A good record, yes, by a bunch of kids who have done their homework and seem to have a healthy but not overbearing degree of self-confidence and belief in what it is they are trying to do. But, really, at this point in my life (and perhaps this is a generational thing: I wonder, now, although I didn't wonder then, how people who grew up with the likes of The Byrds and Credence Clearwater Revival responded to R.E.M. and the paisley underground of the late 1980s) if I want to hear something that sounds like, let's say, Young Marble Giants, early New Order, and the production work of Martin Hannett, I would much rather go back to the things themselves.
So, yes, there is much to admire here. Brevity, for a start. It is one of the interesting developments of this era of everything-is-free-if-you-want-it music consumption and limitless storage that long-playing records (or the digital equivalent) are getting shorter rather than longer (Oneida three-disc concept whatevahs notwithstanding). It's like, now that they are not limited to 80 minutes bands no longer feel the need to record enough music to fill the space available. (I wonder how someone like Stereolab would have responded to that?) This is undoubtedly a Good Thing. Many of the best records of the late seventies / early eighties were EPs and what used to be called "mini albums", generally two or three songs per side. They weren't easy to market, but they enabled a band to cut away the fat. The Reels did two brilliant examples, one in particular ("Pitt Street Farmers") is as good as anything in their esteemed discography. The Triffids had "Raining Pleasure" (and also "Lawson Square Infirmary", by the non-existent group of the same name, which contained a Triffid or two). Internationally, the "Snake Charmer" supergroup (my first exposure to Arthur Russell, tho' I didn't know it at the time), the Meat Puppets and R.E.M. come to mind. It was a pain to have to get up and turn the record over after ten minutes but everything that requires movement is a pain when seen through the eyes of a teenager.
Brevity, then, and simplicity (in the sense of absence of undue complexity). These are hard to pull off. And The xx do pull them off. It's not their fault that the incestuous and insular world of the music blogger has showered them with impossible garlands. But it's hard not to take a deep breath and shout: "GET REAL". 4.5 stars? 9.5 out of ten? Huh? It seems to me that the high points scores are being given out on the basis that (and they may well be right about this) it is a remarkable record for a bunch of 19-year-olds. But if that was a legitimate criterion, its unavoidable corollary is that, if I was sufficiently able to get myself together to write, play, record and release a CD (the "if" in that clause is doing a power of work), I should get an automatic ten stars, irrespective of how awful it would undoubtedly be, simply because I am crap at everything. The review would go something like, "This is an absolutely remarkable record, coming from a guy who is a complete dick at everything he does. Ten stars." Good for me, but, honestly, I wouldn't buy it.
Reality check: "xx" is not a bad first effort. Maybe one day they will grow into something beyond their influences (or their parents' record collections). I like the sound of the guitars. I don't much like the guy's singing voice. Picky picky. I suppose I would much rather kids today were listening to this than, I dunno, gangsta rap (does that still exist?), but there is, really, a fair amount of reinventing of the wheel going on here. Lucky it's a stylish kind of wheel, I guess.
Given the length of the record and the infrequency of Canberra buses, not only was I able to get through all of "xx", but I was also able to sneak in the first few songs of Tiga's new album, "Ciao!". Now, there's an album that has learned the lessons of New Order and applied them in all sorts of interesting, and fun(!), ways. "Shoes": is that the best song of 2009 or is that the best song of 2009?
