In an industry in which it’s held that the way to get ahead is to pump out an unceasing flow of releases – the better to keep your audience engaged in a world packed with distractions – there’s something perversely pleasing about the xx’s aloof reserve. Their last album came out more than six years ago; they last played live in 2018. They clearly haven’t split up – their social media is filled with recent photos of the trio in various combinations – but a follow-up to I See You looks a long way off. “Blink twice if you’re making new music,” posted one desperate fan beneath an Instagram clip of Oliver Sim and Romy Madley Croft cuddling on a Paris balcony.
Instead they have pursued solo careers – albeit that various members of the band have appeared on each other’s projects. The two albums that had previously resulted existed at different polarities. Jamie xx’s In Colour was a kaleidoscopic hymn to the pleasures of London clubs: old hardcore breaks, skipping two-step rhythms, samples of pirate radio MCs and tracks called Gosh and I Know There’s Gonna Be Good Times. At the other extreme was the shock of Sim’s Hideous Bastard. By some distance the least forthcoming member of a band seldom noted for their carefree loquaciousness, it turned out he had a great deal to say, albeit softly: the album was a self-baiting confessional; music as therapy, its songs rooted in the “shame and fear” he said he had felt since being diagnosed with HIV at 17.
Madley Croft’s belated entry into the xx solo album canon sits somewhere between the other two. Like the singles that preceded it – all except 2020’s superb Lifetime are here – it sets out its stall at the point where pop meets the dancefloor. Among Madley Croft’s co-producers are not just Jamie xx but Stuart Price and Fred Again – well-established practitioners at that particular nexus. Driven almost exclusively by four-to-the-floor beats, and featuring a voice that sounds ineffably melancholy even when singing about happiness, you could draw a comparison between the music on Mid Air and the house-fuelled tracks on Everything But the Girl’s 1996 album Walking Wounded. You may also pick up hints of Daft Punk’s filtered French house, and on the fantastic She’s on My Mind, breezy Euro-disco. But what the sonics most frequently evoke is the early 00s wave of ultra-commercial trance hits: the synth chords of Weightless come in chattering triplets; the icy synth stabs on Strong feel like a slightly more subtle version of Faithless’s trademark sound.
The melodies, meanwhile, lean heavily into Madley Croft’s pop smarts. The xx long exerted a musical influence over mainstream pop – around the time I See You was released, songwriter-for-hire Ryan Tedder claimed that their name was invoked as inspiration at “every other” writing session he took part in – which Madley Croft quietly capitalised on, writing for Mark Ronson, Benny Blanco and Tedder’s band OneRepublic and co-authoring Silk City and Dua Lipa’s 2018 smash Electricity. If Mid Air sometimes recalls early 00s trance, what sets it apart is the sheer vividness of the tunes: they sound like songs, rather than toplines tacked on to club instrumentals.
But while Mid Air is musically far more neon-hued than the xx, its brightness is harnessed to lyrics that look inwards, sounding authentically personal. They’re preoccupied with love, but love viewed through the lens of shyness and reserve. The chorus of Loveher is a euphoric explosion, but it comes in between verses that plead with a partner not to confuse natural reticence with shame or diffidence: “It’s not that I’m not proud in the company of strangers, it’s just that some things are for us.” The same confusion powers the romantic woe of The Sea. “Burned a thousand degrees,” but apparently incapable of getting the message across, the object of her affections leaves her: “She said ‘Don’t play that game with my heart and don’t say it’s love if it’s not.’” The album’s evocations of transcendence on the dancefloor, meanwhile, are underscored by fretfulness. “Dancing on my own again,” she sings on Enjoy Your Life. “Anxiety, my old friend.” And “I didn’t believe I deserved to feel this high above the ground,” offers Weightless.
It’s a variation on the old disco trick of marrying elated music to despondent lyrics, but it really packs a punch, partly because the elated music is incredibly well done, and partly because the vulnerability on display here feels genuine and convincing. It occasionally extends to Madley Croft deliberately singing at the top end of her register, audibly straining to hit the high notes. (It says something about how we’ve grown so used to 21st-century pop sounding perfect that this sounds faintly shocking.) The upshot is an album that could soundtrack the height of a party or the following day’s hangover-fuelled existential crisis, which is a rare thing. If the expanse between xx albums can count as downtime, Madley Croft is using it wisely.
This week Alexis listened to
Black Pumas – More Than a Love Song
The single from Black Pumas’ hotly anticipated second album is great: acoustic guitar-driven psych-soul with plenty of space for Eric Burton’s incredible voice to take flight.
