The XX

You have to feel sorry for The XX. At the moment, the music press love them. History tells us that this means they are doomed and that, eventually, every little slight imperfection in what they do will be held up under the cruelest of magnifying glasses and turned against them a thousand times more. Look at The Twang, The View and any number of other former press darlings now written off, to be derided forever, whatever they do.

The XX make coffee shop music, the sort of background noise that you find in Starbucks and their ilk. It is telling that their set only really becomes interesting when the crowd are given large black letter 'x's to throw around, thus providing the extra distraction that the coffee shop brings. You can tell that they have grand ideas, but they lack the level of musicianship that can bring those ideas to fruition. Their imagining of Womack & Womack's 'Teardrops' is wonderfully inventive and yet at the same time woefully flawed. Ideally they need time away from the spotlight to hone their act; sadly, the future seems to hold anything but that.