xx by The xx

xx, the debut from the Wandsworth, London, band the xx, came out on Young Turks in August 2009, and it's a record that whispers and still hits hard. Cut in the label's in-house London studio between December 2008 and February 2009, it's built from almost nothing: Jamie Smith's laptop beats, Oliver Sim's big, round basslines, and spare, reverb-soaked guitar lines from Romy Madley Croft and Baria Qureshi. Smith and engineer Rodaidh McDonald fussed over the mix to keep the hushed intimacy of the band's demos.

Croft and Sim sing most of it as murmured duets, trading lines about love, loss, desire and closeness like two people talking low across a dark room. None of the singles was a hit, but the album became a slow-burning sleeper, helped along by TV placements, sold a million copies and won the 2010 Mercury Prize. It's also the only xx record as a four-piece: Qureshi was out soon after.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.