There’s no great departure on Coexist, the second album from dark London pop group The xx. Like the band’s music, Coexist creeps along, slowly moving away from the blueprint set out on the band’s 2009 debut XX. The band adds new ideas here and there, but they’re smart enough not to overhaul anything. It’s easy to identify as an their own, but that hardly means the album is predictable or too static.
This time around, the band has added dance music to the mix. Before the album’s release, producer and beat-maker Jamie Smith, also known as Jamie xx, told The Creators Project that the album would feature more club influences.
Smith integrates these influences well. While the band’s trademark minimalism is still intact, the beats are often heavier. Where they used to propel songs like “Islands,” they now ground the tracks. On songs like “Reunion” and “Sunset,” Smith builds around a four-on-the-floor beat, often with bassist and vocalist Oliver Sim adding a steady groove.
The trio also stretch their legs thematically. The record is book-ended by two love songs: “Angels” and “Our Song” that are among the band’s most tender. But in between these are nine songs about a struggle to connect on a fundamental level.
The xx is well suited to cover this topic. Sim and vocalist Romy Madley-Croft have an amazing vocal chemistry with one another. When they’re together, they convey the record’s hurt feelings effectively. On “Chained,” Madley-Croft asks, “Did I hold you too tight,” while Sim lets out a wounded coo. In a devastating touch, “Try” has the two harmonizing “I want you to be mine,” and then trails off to Madley-Croft, alone, singing that what they had has “been and gone.”
But there’s still a feeling that The xx have bitten of a little more than it can chew here. The band’s sense of mood remains, honed by reverberated guitars and Smith’s beats. At the same time, they spread that mood thinly across nine songs, making it feel laboured where XX seemed effortless.
The fact that the band stays so cryptic is both a blessing and a curse. Thematically, it works. The people in these songs can’t get across what’s wrong, and that strains their relationships. Still, lyrics like “Been gone such a long time/Don’t feel the same” don’t leave much to hold onto.
The vocals don’t help with this. There are small moments of catharsis on the record. Sim’s voice lifts dramatically as he sings that he “risks to lose” his object of desire on “Fiction,” for example. But Sim and Madley-Croft have some of the smoothest voices this side of R&B. Their composed, almost repressed vocals hammer home a sense of disconnect, but their detachment, which lent XX an air of mystery, just turns to monotony.
While the album isn’t always successful, it’s no failure, either. The xx ultimately linger too long on one mood, but they evoke it so well that it’s easy to see Coexist as something that just barely exceeded their grasp.
