The xx ::: Photo by Josh Lovseth

Running only a little late, the xx played six or so songs for a positively reverent crowd Friday afternoon. Their in-store performance at Sonic Boom Records in Ballard proved to be just as packed as the band’s later already sold-out engagement at Neumos was slated to be. Shut-out from the night’s drinking-age-only hot ticket brought no small amount of under-agers through the door, and they filled every un-taken space in the store’s many aisles and nooks. And judging on this turnout alone, a measure of the success of their first go-around the states one might say, this trio has genuinely out-hyped nearly every recent virgin ambassador the Isles have sent our way, and then some. I think I can say with very little hyperbole, though their new record has been on the shelves a mere three months, that this London three-piece are riding a wave of momentum that’s starting to reach tsunami proportions. (And we thought Fanfarlo had it good.)

Timing is everything, but making use of your moment in the internet age often means sending young untested bands (such as this) on the road as soon as possible, often while still nascent, and the international rise from obscurity has already been abrupt for these barely twenty-year olds. Earlier this month, following a successful CMJ introducing them to America, they suffered the loss of their second guitarist, an unfortunate occurrence just when a palpable buzz had developed around their quietly romantic boy-girl sound. Now singer Romy Madley Croft is all alone on guitar and both she and bassist/singer Oliver Sim are pitching in on effects where they can fill in.

Drama aside, the steamy dynamic portrayed by Sim and Croft is even more enchanting once one see’s it play out on the stage. Mostly because they aren’t really playing anything out, they’re just singing, and the whole is much more than the sum of it’s parts. All in black, Croft appears adorably shy and awkward, while Sim is possibly just as awkward in his lanky frame and bounty of gold chains. One imagines these songs to be conversations between lovers of deep connection, the tension of their attraction an inescapable cloud over every interaction. Instead they come across as meditations on love by ones still discovering, still unjaded by it’s myriad causes and effects.