On the second night of a seven-night residency at Brixton Academy, The xx delivered a show of such quality that it is hard to believe that anything or anyone could better it this year. Billed as a homecoming, the band have taken over several venues in Brixton and curated a mini-festival of events, cinema showings and, of course, live music. Each night has a different support artist hand-picked by the band and Thursday night saw a sultry and seductive set from the Ethiopian-American singer, Kelela. Bathed in red light, her beautiful and soulful voice controlled the audience while she swayed hypnotically to a heavy beat from the accompanying DJ. Her alternative R’n’B style was a great warm-up for The xx, as her use of the space and silence echoed a lot of their famous early work in a short set before the main act.

As The xx took to the stage with a minimum of fuss, it was easy to see that their entire aesthetic has changed and opened up in a similar manner to the evolutionary leap of I See You. Gone is the moody darkness of early stage sets, now replaced by a stunning production involving revolving mirrors, glass floors and ceilings and a stunning lighting show. The band themselves may all still dress in black, but they now seem much more comfortable and confident in letting go and broke into smiles throughout. Starting off with ‘Say Something Loving’, before bringing out two big guns from their first album xx in ‘Crystalised’ and ‘Islands’, they drew a huge roar from the audience which did not diminish in the slightest all night. Oliver Sim’s languid style of prowling with his bass guitar was in sharp contrast to Romy Madley Croft’s quieter demeanour, while Jamie Smith alternated between keyboards and drums on a transparent mini-stage behind and above the duo. The xx have always truly understood the power of stillness and space, and an early highlight of this was in a sparse version of ‘Basic Space’ where both Croft and Sim ditched their instruments and performed a duet in minimal lighting. Alternately, one sang in the spotlight with the other’s gaze fixed on them and vice versa throughout the track. Sim then left the stage, as Romy remained to play ’Performance’, which drew attention to her rich and smoky voice.

The flip side of those small and intimate moments came as Jamie’s beats delivered bass so deep and heavy that the walls literally shook with the vibrations, before ‘Infinity’ delivered the night’s first unforgettable moment. Building with beats much heavier than in its original recorded form and somehow playing both drums and keyboards at exactly the same time, Jamie took the audience to a euphoric crescendo. As Sim and Croft repeatedly sang “I can’t give it up”, everybody in the venue was lost in an almost spiritual moment. Following that with another knock-out song in ‘VCR’, the crowd were left breathless and ecstatic. Sim asked for the lights to be turned up as he wanted to see everyone, telling us all that he watched his first gig in this very venue (The White Stripes no less) and didn’t realise what the view was like at the time.

As the evening continued into more and more of a party, Jamie’s beats came increasingly to the forefront as ‘Dangerous’ hit a sweet spot by sounding like one of his solo tracks with the added benefit of his main band featuring on it too. Seamlessly mixing in a version of 90s garage tune ‘Sweet Like Chocolate’, the night took on a different colour before jaw-dropping moment after moment dropped onto a rapturous audience. While both Croft and Sim’s voices are incredibly distinctive and pure, it was Croft’s guitar playing that pulled even more screams of adulation as the night drew on. ‘Shelter’ was simply earth-shattering, before somehow being topped by Jamie’s own ‘Loud Places’. The stage colours changed to a rainbow kaleidoscope and, as the glass ceiling rotated, the entire venue was bathed in colour. For the only time in the evening, the crowd stopped singing and dancing and you could actually hear a gasp at how stunning this effect was. Whoever designed the production of this show deserves every plaudit available, it is guaranteed that this was the moment described to all family and friends the following day. As the band left the stage for a brief interlude, even this gap was elevated to something special by Jamie, setting up a beat that built and crashed throughout the time they were offstage alongside another stunning light show.

Returning for a brief encore before curfew, including ‘Intro’ and finishing with ‘Angels’, the band were met with an ovation so ferocious in sound and length that it reduced Sim to tears while Croft could only stand stunned with her hand over her mouth. The crowd had fully played its part in an unforgettable evening, and the band were visibly shaken by the depth of feeling for them in their hometown. Walking off stage, Sim finally recovered and jumped into Croft’s arms after a night that will never be forgotten by anyone present.

Jamie MacMillan