In March 2014, The xx took their advanced pop experiment in fortified introspection to its most cripplingly self-conscious conclusion. At Manhattan’s Park Avenue Armory Drill Hall they played a succession of dates that The New York Times headlined ‘The Rock Show, Inverted.’ Playing to an audience of just 45 people at each of the twenty five shows over ten days, Romy Madly Croft, Oliver Sim and Jamie Smith had to bow their heads in penance to avoid looking square in the eyes the effect of their music, at that moment gridlocked in a beautiful communion of the inner life of shy people.

A new touchstone for pop intimacy, the show had been road-tested in the bowels of the city during the previous year’s Manchester International Festival. The xx debuted a new song at The Armory, Performance. Its chorus ran: “You’ll see me hurting/when my heart breaks/I’ll put on a performance/I’ll put on a brave face”, set only to barely audible sub-bass and the kind of intricate, spidery guitar motif that had by now become a signature to their sound. In retrospect, The Armory shows were a line-in-the-sand moment for The xx. They had reached the furthest limits of their experiments in the monochromatic. A hard won light was beginning to beckon.

“The record sounds triumphant and celebratory,” says Jamie, of their third long-player, I See You, “but the journey we went on and what we had to go through to get to this point should be acknowledged.” I See You is the spoils of four hard years’ labour, a vertiginous new height scaled for the pop group. It is a record that sees them performing with optimum new nerve, transparency and clarity. Because it is made by The xx, its implicit boldness is sculpted from a tough and tender space, one which stretched its limits for expansion against the core musical aesthetic Romy and Oliver first found as 16-year-olds playing on a stage together. “What makes us sound like us isn’t intentional,” says Oliver. “What always surprises me,” says Jamie, “is when they just play the two instruments together they come up with things that I could never come up with, so simple that I wish I could. That particular guitar sound and Oliver’s bass playing will always create this mood which I love and which I can’t imagine ever getting bored of.”

I See You is marked by a tonal shift to something close to pure, crisp pop structure, adorned by unusual crescendos that echo a dextrous DJ inching their dancer toward climax without ever quite lifting the house lights. Its lyric sheet moves from the danger and hopelessness of love to its deliciousness and rapture; a move into a more outward looking proposition. I See You is recognisably still The xx but now powered by voluble ambition, of the three perfect counterweights to one another starting to not just realise but harness their full potential. You might even want to think of the decisive move from Joy Division to New Order here, too. The Armory shows turned out to be a double bluff. When they take their plum festival slots in 2017, armed with the ten most robust songs of their career The xx should prick the skin and touch gently the shoulder of an audience reaching to the back of the field.

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