“Give it up. I can't give it up.”
The Blog Era and 2009’s Music Scene
Back in 2009, indie music lived and breathed on the internet. Blogs like Pitchfork, Stereogum, and BrooklynVegan were the gatekeepers, shaping what was cool and what wasn’t. If a band got the right write-up, they could go from total obscurity to the top of festival lineups. Indie rock was shifting—moving away from the dance-punk and garage rock of the early 2000s into something more intricate, more atmospheric. Animal Collective was making weird, wonderful soundscapes, Dirty Projectors were getting experimental, and bands like Phoenix and Passion Pit were making indie pop with electronic flourishes. It was a wild time, and if you were paying attention, it felt like you were discovering music in real time.
How We Got Our Music in 2009
Streaming wasn’t really a thing yet. Spotify was just starting in Europe, but in the U.S., we were still figuring it out. Apple Music didn’t exist, and iTunes made you buy everything track by track. Most of us had massive MP3 libraries, built through a mix of legal (and, let’s be honest, not-so-legal) downloads from places like LimeWire, Soulseek, or blog-hosted MP3s. Vinyl was starting to make a comeback, but mostly among people who really cared about the listening experience. CDs were still around but fading. The main way you found new music? Blogs, friends, or some random forum where someone swore up and down that you had to check out this new band.
Moving to San Francisco and Finding My Soundtrack
2009 was a big year for me. I’d just moved to San Francisco from Chicago, starting fresh, figuring things out. I was in a pretty good place—excited about the city, spending time with close friends, still trying to work through my own stuff but feeling connected to the people around me. Music was a big part of that. I was consuming it constantly, pulling recommendations from blogs, downloading new albums, trying to find the right soundtrack for this new chapter of my life.
The First Time I Heard xx
And then xx hit me. It was one of those albums that just stopped me in my tracks. It wasn’t just music—it was a mood, a space, a moment frozen in time. The way Romy Madley Croft and Oliver Sim barely raised their voices, like they were letting you in on some whispered secret, while Jamie xx stripped everything down to the essentials. It felt like negative space in music form. And the weirdest part? These were love songs. And I didn’t even think I liked love songs. But these weren’t the typical grand, sweeping gestures—these were about hesitation, miscommunication, the push and pull of intimacy. And that? That hit me.
The Sound of Distance and Connection
At the time, I wasn’t sitting around pondering the meaning of love, but xx made me feel something I couldn’t quite name. It captured the feeling of being close to someone and still feeling miles apart. The way Romy and Oliver traded lines like two people circling each other but never fully connecting—it was haunting. And Jamie xx’s production? Surgical. Every note, every pause, every echo felt intentional, like he knew exactly what to leave out to make you feel more.
The Tracks That Stuck With Me
"Intro" was the perfect way in. That looping guitar, the pulsing beat—it felt like walking into a dark room and letting your eyes adjust. It didn’t need words to tell you how it felt.
"Infinity" was the one that really stuck, though. That creeping guitar, the eerie spaciousness, the echoing refrain of "Give it up"—it felt massive and empty at the same time. And then, at the end, when Romy sings "Can’t give it up" one last time? Absolutely ridiculous. Subtly anthemic, but it hits like a gut punch. Like you’re screaming into the void, but the void is just quiet enough to hear you back.
"Stars" hit in a different way. The whole "They’ve all got stars in their eyes" line—it made me think about how much we project onto other people, how we romanticize moments and memories that might not be as deep as we want them to be. It was understated but hit in just the right way.
And then there’s "Shelter." I liked it, but it wasn’t the gut punch for me that it was for some people. Still, Romy’s delivery of "Maybe I had said something that was wrong / Can I make it better with the lights turned on?" is so raw and so small—it’s that feeling of wanting to undo something, knowing you can’t, but still hoping that maybe, just maybe, there’s a way back.
xx and Vinyl—A Perfect Match
I played xx a lot. And when I really wanted to sink into it, I played it on vinyl. It’s the kind of album that was made for that format—the warmth, the slight crackle, the way the space between sounds feels even more alive. It forced me to slow down, to sit with it, to really listen. In a world that was starting to feel more and more instant, listening to xx on vinyl made it feel tangible, like something I could hold onto.
Looking Back
I even wrote about it back then—put it at number one on my best-of-the-year list. I knew it was special, but I didn’t know if we’d ever get something like it from The xx again. And in a way, that made it even better. It was lightning in a bottle.
The genius of xx is in what it leaves out. The silences between words, the spaces between notes. It doesn’t tell you exactly how to feel—it just gives you enough to find yourself in it. And even now, after all these years, I keep coming back to it. The way it aches, the way it hesitates, the way it breathes.
Maybe that’s why xx still feels timeless to me. It’s not just an album. It’s a memory. A feeling. A snapshot of a moment stretched out forever.
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