After fans were treated to a short string of singles throughout the year, hopefully, leading up to an announcement, ‘Romance With A Memory’ and ‘Fruit’ crept out to optimistic ears. Now, alongside the release of 3rd single ‘Hideous’ , The xx’s Oliver Sim has confirmed a full-length release, ‘Hideous Bastard’ coming this September 9th. You can pre-order the new album here, and check out the new track, and its Jimmy Somerville vocal feature, below.
There was a period of time around the late 2000’s / early 2010’s where indie-art-pop was pretty much the best of what everywhere had to offer. For a short while, art pop was well and truly in the zeitgeist. Alt-J’s fabulous debut An Awesome Wave, Phoenix took off in France with Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, you could even go so far as to call Arcade Fire’s, now legendary, Funeral a soiree into art-pop with heavy folk leanings. But, for me, The xx nailed that formula. xx was an accidental masterpiece in every sense, and now Oliver Sim, 1/3 of the magic formula, has once again joined forces with fellow xx bandmate Jamie xx (there’s 2/3 of the formula) to bring us Hideous Bastard.
In a note commenting on the album’s announcement, Sim also dropped the news that he has also been living with HIV since the age of 17. He then goes on to explain how this has impacted his life, as well as his music.
“Early on in the making of my record, ‘Hideous Bastard’, I realised that I was writing a lot about fear and shame,” Sim explains. “I imagine that might paint a picture of a dark, ‘woe is me’-sounding album, but in recent years I’ve become a firm believer that the best antidote to these feelings can be bringing them to the surface and shedding some light on them.” After the realization occurred, he went on to clarify, “I haven’t written the record to dwell, but rather to free myself of some of the shame and fear that I’ve felt for a long time. So, I hear a lot of the music as joyous, because the experience of writing and recording it has been the complete opposite of what fear and shame have been for me.” The new LP will also appear alongside a feature film written and directed by Yann Gonzalez, in which Sim will star. We don’t know at the moment if the film and album will be linked in any way, but the film premiered last month so if you want some homework… this is it.
Oliver’s film HIDEOUS, written and directed by Yann Gonzalez is premiering at Semaine de La Critique at Cannes pic.twitter.com/pBPPbJajvv
— The xx (@The_xx) April 20, 2022
