Two days before tonight's the xx show at the Showbox Sodo and I was listening to the band for the first time. As a music journalist, this is incredibly irresponsible: the South London trio has been the most critically adored new indie of the past year, their blend of post punk minimalism and understated RnB coos filling the hearts and minds and sexy time bedrooms on both sides of the Atlantic.



But, as a person who judges books by their covers, I hope you can understand my apprehension. The xx's calculations set off my bullshit detector. The band have rigid haircuts. The band have an obnoxious tendency to frame themselves as responsive to underground and mainstream tastes by name dropping both Young Marble Giants and Timbaland.

I'm glad I got over it. As it turns out, everyone was right, the xx are a stellar band with a knack for capturing what's simultaneously sexy and burdensome about realistic relationships. “Crystalized,” finds the band at the height of their prowess, getting the most out of simple drum machine thuds and furtive bass lines. The intimate boy-girl vocal interplay of Romy Madley Croft and Oliver Sim breathes heavy—acknowledging the miniature slights that dull young love. “Heart Skipped a Beat” gets the same powerful tug in two lines: “Sometimes I still need you,” sings Croft hopefully, “Sometimes I still need you,” sings Sim, resigned.

My favorite track is “Islands” which starts and stops, letting the interlocking guitar and bass parts stay up all night talking. Sometimes Sim follows Croft's voice with his own, and sometimes he responds with four emphatic bass plucks, like he's nodding and smiling. Here the band stirs up their catchiest and surest chorus; it would be muted by most band's standards but in the xx's minimal world it's an eruption of feeling, an unfiltered high on an album filled with compromised joys.

The xx play the Showbox Sodo tonight (with fantastic openers jj and Nosaj Thing ).
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