Sky Kirkham, Journalist

"We’re just having a lot of fun doing it, above all, at the moment, so I’m really excited to get the album out there and play the gigs around Australia.”

The XX have done a commendable job of adapting to the venue without losing what makes the band special.

"I mean there’s influences everywhere, but if you put too much in – you don’t want to make it too cloudy or have too much in there.”

"We just kind of combine it. It’s like a celebration and all of the music comes out, all these musicians go nuts and then I sit there with a microphone and say what I believe.”

Too often though, it merely exists: a slow pulse, too busy to be meditative and too repetitious to fully engage with. By itself it’s fine, but it seems a little incomplete after the primordial Hecker.

“We’re looking at going over to Europe hopefully – we’ll be getting confirmation about that at the end of March.”

The opening few tracks, including single Belispeak, make a powerful start, but there’s something subtly off in the mix.

The night is a series of highlights, played by an enthusiastic troubadour to a large and welcoming crowd: the best kind of gig.

“One of our philosophies when we started the band was that we wanted to be fun. We wanted to be fun and we wanted to be entertaining, those were the two things.”

“I think the appreciation for music over there is very different to here as well. I’m not sure why it is, but people are really intent on paying attention to music over there."

“We have a drive to write just the perfect pop song. I don’t know what form it will be but... I like the harmonic style we’re doing."