The xx - Crystalised

The xx formed in 2005, when they were still in high school. They signed to the UK label Young, and put out their first album in 2009. It won the prestigious Mercury Prize, and was named one of the best albums of the year by Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and more. Since then, the Guardian has named it one of the best albums of the 21st century. This year, the three band members, Romy Croft, Oliver Sim, and Jamie xx played together as The xx for the first time in 8 years. I spoke to them in between the weekends at Coachella, where they were opening their sets with the song “Crystalised.” It’s the first song they ever released, back in April 2009, when the lineup also included Baria Qureshi on guitar. I spoke to Romy, Jamie and Oliver, here at my studio, about how they first found each other, and how they made “Crystalised.” For more info, visit songexploder.net/the-xx. https://songexploder.net/the-xx

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Hrishikesh Hirway?

  You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and, piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirway.

• 0:11Hrishikesh Hirway?

  I'm going to be on tour, playing some shows this fall. I'm going to be in London on Wednesday, November 18th. I'm going to be performing solo at Rough Trade Records on Denmark Street, and I'm going to be in conversation about my music moderated by one of my favorite actors and writers, Matthew Bainton. And a ticket to the show also gets you a copy of my album on vinyl or CD. And in December, I'm going to be on tour supporting S. Carrie. We're going to be playing a bunch of shows in the Northeast US. So I hope to see you in one of those places. You can find all the details and get links to tickets at songexploder.net/live. That's songexploder.net/live.

• 0:55Hrishikesh Hirway?

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• 1:39Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Visit tidal.com/songexploder to create an account and start uploading your music for free. That's tidal.com/songexploder for zero platform fees on every sale. Your music, your earnings.

• 1:56Hrishikesh Hirway?

  There's a new podcast called Before the Moment with Nile Rodgers. In every legendary music career, there's a moment right before it all changes. And in every episode of this podcast, Nile Rodgers talks to a legendary musician about the choices, the events, and the relationships that shaped their career before the moment that everything changed for them. Every story is unique and opens a window into the lives of some of the biggest names in music. And Nile is the perfect person to lead these conversations because for over 50 years, he's played guitar with artists like Diana Ross, David Bowie, Madonna, Daft Punk, and Beyoncé. In the first season of the podcast, some of Nile's guests include John Legend, Miguel, and more.

• 2:40Hrishikesh Hirway?

  New episodes are coming out every other Tuesday. Listen to Before the Moment with Nile Rodgers wherever you get your podcasts. The XX formed in 2005, when they were still in high school. They signed to the UK label Young and put out their first album in 2009. It won the prestigious Mercury Prize and was named one of the best albums of the year by Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, and more. And since then, The Guardian has named it one of the best albums of the 21st century. This year, the three band members, Rami Croft, Oliver Sim, and Jamie XX, played together as the XX for the first time in eight years. I spoke to them in between the weekends at Coachella, where they were opening their sets with the song "Crystallized."

• 3:25Hrishikesh Hirway?

  It's the first song that they ever released, back in April 2009, when the lineup also included Baria Kareschi on guitar. I spoke to Rami, Jamie, and Oliver here at my studio about how they first found each other and how they made "Crystallized."

• 3:56Speaker 01

  I'm Jamie, I'm the producer and I do all the electronic stuff on stage.

• 4:01Speaker 02

  I'm Romy and I play guitar and I'm one of the songwriters and I sing.

• 4:06Speaker 03

  And I'm Oliver, I play bass, I sing and I'm the other songwriter.

• 4:14Speaker 02

  Oliver and I met in nursery school when we were three.

• 4:18Speaker 03

  And then we met Jamie when we were eleven, the first day of school.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  I didn't know anybody else that came from my previous school. So I was on the hunt for some friends quickly. And I gravitated towards these two quite instantly. I just felt like some kind of similarity, of like a strangeness probably, that I felt similar to.

• 4:46Speaker 02

  This is wonderful, fascinating to hear this now. Jamie and I used to go skateboarding together and we used to watch a lot of skate videos together and discovered a lot of amazing music. There was a video that Jamie showed me that had Portishead and Maddy Starr and The Cure. I think that was actually an amazing way of discovering music.

• 5:05Speaker 01

  And then my uncles were DJs, so I inherited my decks when I was 10 years old, playing records, playing my parents' records. And then I learnt about the sampling of those records and all of that.

• 5:18Speaker 03

  We didn't really start making music together. Like, we started independently. Jamie was making his solo music, Romy was making hers, I was making mine.

• 5:29Speaker 02

  It was just such a private, personal exploration, connecting with music. It was such like a shy... I remember a moment of us sitting together and I was like, "I like singing" and you were like, "I like singing."

• 5:44Speaker 02

  Then Oliver and I were kind of trying to, along with Baria, who was also in the band at the time, trying to like find a way to play live.

• 5:52Speaker 01

  We were gigging, me, Romy and Baria, for quite a while. So for a period of time, I was watching these guys do it and going to the gigs.

• 6:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, we begged Jamie, we said, please play drums in the band, please play live drums, because we thought he was a great drummer.

• 6:09Speaker 01

  I didn't really know what to do, because I didn't want to play drums on it, because it sounded so good as it was. It wouldn't have worked, because these guys were a lot quieter than they are now. You just wouldn't have been able to hear what was going on on stage if there was a live drum kit. That was one of my main things that was stopping me from doing that.

• 6:26Speaker 02

  I'm really glad that Jamie said no at first, because it kind of forced Oliver and I to, we figured out a way to make electronic drums, simplistic ones first. And I think because of the limitations, I mean, a lot of everything we'll say has probably come from limitations. There's, you know, Oliver and I were like writing two electronic drums from the eight-track that I had, it had like drum beats in it. So we sort of would use those, or I remember making some really simple drum beats on like a weird programme on, drummer on my computer. What is that programme?

• 6:56Speaker 01

  It's called Hammerhead or something, very basic drum machine.

• 7:00Speaker 02

  I really remember that, and then just we had that, burnt it on a CD, and then we gave it to the sound person and said like, have to be like track three, and it would go like, one, two, three. Eventually, we said to Jamie, please, can you, can you like help us and make some beats? So you made some beats and then eventually...

• 7:16Speaker 01

  Eventually, I went on stage and started playing the MPC.

• 7:18Speaker 02

  Having Jamie play the MPC live in the band was a very big turning point and of the fluidity of it being live feeling, but still electronic.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  And MPC is a music production centre, that's what it stands for, and it's actually meant for making full tracks on the usually hip-hop. But I never did that, because I always just wanted to use it as a live tool, playing it live, tapping the buttons.

• 7:53Speaker 03

  I think when we started writing Crystallized, we only had about four songs. You know, we were playing pub sets for about 20 to 25 minutes. And Jamie had just joined the band. I remember the very earliest demo was Romy and I playing two acoustic guitars.

• 8:23Speaker 03

  It was in front of the programme on.

• 8:26Speaker 02

  Photo booth.

• 8:28Speaker 03

  Photo booth, the most roundabout way.

• 8:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, it worked though. We'd filmed ourselves, there was the video and then you could extract the audio.

• 8:43Speaker 03

  At that point, songs very much started as like words on a piece of paper.

• 8:48Speaker 02

  We sort of used to share lyrics back and forth, like poems.

• 8:52Speaker 03

  I remember my first lyric was inspired by something my mum read in the paper about how you can have your ashes compressed so hard that they turn into diamonds, which is really macabre. But that's the first lyric. You've applied the pressure to have me crystallized.

• 9:13Speaker 04

  You've applied the pressure to have me crystallized. And you've got the faith that I could bring paradise.

• 9:30Speaker 02

  Those first lines of Crystallized, you know, I thought they were so visual and really unique. But then I think I sort of reacted. Then I'm sort of, in my second verse, trying to write something that has got a similar pattern and wanted to use an interesting word like crystallizer. There's like paralyzed and, you know, other words that are kind of bouncing off what Oliver had said.

• 9:56Speaker 05

  Before I'm paralyzed. Do I have to keep up the pace? To keep you satisfied?

• 10:08Speaker 03

  Mine and Romy's writing was very much like a patchwork rather than like sat in the room together. But so many of the songs from the outside must really sound like we're singing together, you know, two parts of a love song sang at each other. You know, Romy and I being best friends and not only that, both being gay. You know, it's not directed at one another. It was kind of making each other's perspectives, kind of just hoping they would fit.

• 10:43Speaker 02

  Sort of a shared space, both individually saying our perspectives on it, but never really asking like, oh, what's that about for you necessarily? Just reacting to each other's lyrics. Then you could sort of like create things and then send it back and forth between each other. Have that distance from each other, but the closeness. Yeah, that autonomy to be able to make things separately was a big thing for me. And the way Oliver and I sing together kind of comes from a place of like, oh, you go first, no, you go first. So then we sing together.

• 11:14Speaker 04

  So don't think that I'm pushing you away. When you're the one that I've kept closest.

• 11:22Speaker 01

  The first time I really remember was us trying to figure out what the song was and how to play it live, probably for that weekend's show. I was also trying to figure out my new toy, which was an MPC. And plugged a microphone into it and got Oliver to sing like an ooh, just a note, just to see how it worked and then recorded it into the machine and started messing with the pitch live. And that became the intro of Crystallized.

• 11:55Speaker 01

  So that sound is still that same sound from that first day of just trying to work out Crystallized.

• 12:01Speaker 02

  It really feels like such a deep dive into memory to remember the creation of this song. I know that in terms of my personal connection with playing the guitar, I've never really been that interested in like full chords. I really love like melodic guitar.

• 12:23Speaker 02

  But wanting to be able to sing confidently and play the guitar, there was a simplicity to the instrumentation of it. Because a lot of what we wanted to put on the album was exactly what we could play live. And I wouldn't feel confident to play that full intro riff and sing. I had to move to just running single notes.

• 13:04Hrishikesh Hirway?

  My conversation with the XX continues after this.

• 13:11Hrishikesh Hirway?

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• 13:57Hrishikesh Hirway?

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• 15:24Hrishikesh Hirway?

  a long haul truck driver, or an aerospace engineer at NASA, just to name a few examples. The show gives you an insider view into all kinds of jobs from a wide range of industries, answering questions like, what do mail carriers learn about us from our mail? There are so many jobs out there that exist only as titles in our imagination, if they even register that much. This show is a chance to reach beyond what you know, or think you know. If you're curious to learn more about the work lives of other people, check out What It's Like to Be, wherever you get podcasts.

• 16:00Speaker 03

  When it came time to record this song, we'd actually done a few different versions with different producers. Like, our label and management had set us up on like, different speed dates. Like, we had done a version of the song with Diplo, who is the most exciting person ever to us. And I think we'd done another version with a producer called Lex, but it wasn't quite right, because I think, you know, the space in the music... Often ended up being filled by that person's like sound and their signature.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  Especially because we were all so young, we didn't really, you know, know what we were doing. But it felt like we were just, you know, handed over to these different people.

• 16:44Speaker 02

  We all just really loved the sound of the demos. They just had like our feeling of the live show. And we were just like, we'd hear some of the versions back and be like, oh, we just like how the demo sounded before. And then you kind of get people saying, oh, but this is, you should work with them because, you know, they've done this. And I think we were all just quite like, oh, we don't really bothered about that. We just want it to sound like us.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  It was really useful to have gone through all that and hear all the different ways that things could be filled out. And I was learning a lot at the same time. But definitely the back of my head, I was like, I could do this.

• 17:22Speaker 03

  We didn't think it was an option for Jamie to produce until we had worked with other people.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  And then XL employed Roddy McDonald to be the engineer at their new studio, which was just in the garage of the headquarters of XL. And that sort of opened the door to the possibility of maybe me being able to do it because he had all of the engineering skills. It kind of gave me the opportunity to try and prove myself.

• 17:50Speaker 02

  And I remember being feeling excited at the idea of Jamie doing it because I know he would keep it sounding like us.

• 17:56Speaker 01

  Everything was so exciting. We had this space for free. We'd worked out how to do all these songs structurally because we played them live so much.

• 18:08Speaker 01

  It was the MPC stuff first, so that the groove was right to record the guitars over.

• 18:16Speaker 01

  And I just literally played it in like I would in the band.

• 18:24Speaker 01

  So I was playing it live, just do the whole thing in one go.

• 18:30Speaker 01

  We were all talking about rumble drums, which is a term I think we just made up.

• 18:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  From listening to a few different bits of music.

• 18:39Speaker 03

  It's those tumble and rumble and drums.

• 18:44Speaker 03

  I remember you like tapping on a table to kind of like get the idea across.

• 18:52Speaker 01

  I was working out how to make electronic production feel live and feel organic. Trying to work out how to make every click, every rim sound slightly different like it would if you were just hitting a snare. So it was like painstaking.

• 19:06Speaker 02

  And I play on the guitar.

• 19:09Speaker 02

  And then Boria plays the second guitar part.

• 19:13Speaker 02

  And then Oliver joins with the bass.

• 19:29Speaker 02

  It's interesting to me how sparse the verses are.

• 19:38Speaker 03

  There is just always a part of me that winces when I listen back to that because I almost don't recognise that person. It has an element of like finding like an old diary from being a teenager. You know, that is not how I sound today. When we recorded that, I was eighteen and I'm thirty six now, so I'm eighteen years later.

• 20:01Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  When we were kids, their voices sounded, if you were to pitch one up or one down, they would sound exactly the same.

• 20:11Speaker 02

  I like to think that we learnt to speak at a similar time, you know, we grew up together learning. So I like to think it's kind of interwoven with that, that we sing in a similar way.

• 20:35Speaker 02

  I feel like that's a melody that Oliver brought to the song. There's quite a lot of that in, I realised in our first album. I don't know what it is.

• 20:42Speaker 01

  It might have just been that those are the moments where you play the more complicated guitar parts, so you can do the words at the same time.

• 20:50Speaker 02

  Quite possibly, yes.

• 21:00Speaker 02

  I kind of love the playfulness of it just being a free melody that like doesn't have words and people can sort of sing along with it.

• 21:07Speaker 01

  And that particular time, I was really obsessed with not using any pre-made sounds. So every sound is sampled and layered from records that I owned.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  And that was just fun for me.

• 21:22Speaker 02

  In theory, I think we've talked about doing the vocals at the same time, but I don't know if we actually, you know, I remember being in conversation of it being like a nice idea that we've sort of recorded everything in live. I think that was aspirational because it had been written live, but I don't think we ended up doing that in the end.

• 21:38Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Oh, let me play you Oliver's vocal stem because you can hear Rami singing in the background, being picked up by his mic and vice versa.

• 21:52Speaker 03

  So we did sing it at the same time.

• 21:55Speaker 01

  Ah, yeah.

• 21:55Speaker 03

  Oh, that's, that's a nice discovery.

• 21:58Speaker 02

  Nice. Thank you for showing us this.

• 22:20Speaker 02

  There's a part towards the end of the song where we sing our individual parts that are different over each other, singing our pre-choruses.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  Mine is, things have gotten closer to the sound and I've done things in small doses. So don't think that I'm pushing you away when you're the one that I've kept closest.

• 22:38Speaker 02

  Um, mine is glaciers have melted to the sea. I wish the tide would take me over. I've been down on my knees and you just keep on getting closer.

• 23:04Speaker 02

  It's still now one of my favourite parts and like we've just performed it. But I have to like block him out completely in my mind and just sing my part. And not try and think about what you're saying, cause I'll start seeing your part. But that I kind of look back on fondly as like, that's an interesting decision that we did that. And I love it now, but do you remember why we did that?

• 23:24Speaker 03

  You know, in hindsight, the song to me is the avoidant and the anxious. And you know, that moment feels like a moment of like conflict with the resolution of coming back together and singing in unison. The person in the relationship that feels scared of intimacy takes, you know, a step back. And then the other person in the relationship who feels scared by that step back takes a step forward. And that kind of like cat and mouse chase, which is all too frequent. Because I think those two characters often attract one another.

• 24:07Speaker 03

  And without, you know, getting too therapy and personal, you know, I definitely relate to that anxious role. And yeah, I kind of see very much this song as like a tale of those two characters. But with a resolution and a compromise of, you know, that final refrain of just go slow. You know, it's not that I am not in this. It's not that I don't care. But you're gonna have to match my kind of speed and how we do this relationship.

• 24:50Speaker 03

  This album to me is peering into other people's relationships and building my own expectations and my own fantasies and excitement about it.

• 25:00Speaker 03

  I felt such an embarrassment that I hadn't been in love. Like it made the songs less honest or less vulnerable, but it was still such a personal thing for me to share, my fantasies and my feelings. I think Romy grew up a lot faster than I did. And you were writing from more of a place of experience, I think.

• 25:30Speaker 02

  I have always been drawn to romance and the euphoria of that and the heartache of that. And I think that I was writing from some experience at this time. Still very early love and lust and longing. But I think we definitely spoke about it not being so specific with time, place, or gender. I think this song for me feels very open to interpretation, which I love.

• 26:03Speaker 02

  We've all grown up together, literally, from a young age and throughout this band and throughout this process. And I feel very nostalgic hearing this song again. And it's really lovely to be able to talk about it. You know, we've been relearning how to play all this old music and going into the projects and the stems and reconnecting with the decisions we were making then. And I've actually really enjoyed that as we are working on a new album, to just reconnect with those decisions and that naivety and the simplicity of that time. And I think it's nice to learn from ourselves again. When you say it's half our life, okay, that does bring up. I can't believe it's been that long and I'm so grateful to be able to still play this music.

• 26:59Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And now here's "Crystallized" by The XX in its entirety.

• 27:37Speaker 04

  You apply the pressure They'll be crystallized And you've got the faith That I could bring paradise

• 27:52Speaker 05

  I forgive and forget Before I'm paralyzed Do I have to keep up the pace? To keep you satisfied?

• 28:09Speaker 04

  Things have gotten closer to the sun And I've done things that's more roses So don't think that I'm pushing you away When you're the one that I've kept closest Ay ay ay

• 28:27Speaker 04

  Ay ay ay

• 28:31Speaker 04

  Ay ay ay

• 28:35Speaker 04

  Ay ay ay

• 28:39Speaker 05

  You don't move slow And taking steps in my direction The summer sun's echo Doesn't lessen your affection No

• 28:56Speaker 04

  You say I'm foolish For pushing this aside

• 29:04Speaker 04

  But no

• 29:08Speaker 04

  I won't give up Ay ay ay

• 29:11Speaker 05

  I see as I'm melting to the sea I wish the tide wouldn't take me over I've been down on my knees

• 29:22Speaker 04

  And you just keep on getting closer Ay ay ay

• 30:24Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Visit songexploder.net to learn more. You'll find links to buy or stream Crystallized, and you can watch the music video. This episode was produced by me, Craig Ely, Mary Dolan, and Kathleen Smith, with production assistance from Tiger Biscuit. The episode artwork is by Carlos Lerma, and I made the show's theme music and logo. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, listener-supported, artist-owned podcasts. You can learn more about our shows at radiotopia.fm. If you'd like to hear more from me, subscribe to my newsletter, which you can find on the Song Exploder website. You can also get a Song Exploder shirt at songexploder.net/shirt. I'm Rishi Keishirway. Thanks for listening.

• 31:13Speaker 05

  Radiotopia.

• 31:16Speaker 05

  From PRX.