The XX kicked off their I See You Tour Asia in Jakarta, and it was pretty amazing.

Going to a concert has always been one of my favorite things to do in life. The buzz and excitement that it brings must be the upmost blessing that god had planned, to keep us, humans, sane in this chaotic world that we live in. 2017 has been a good year in my catalogue of concerts, and it would be pretty tough to top it off. But damn, 2018 kicked off in a pretty amazing way.

It was around September when IsmayaLive announced that they managed to make Jakarta as the opening city for The XX’s Asia Tour that set to start early 2018. I’ve always liked The XX, though it’s nothing serious, we’re taking things slow, and going to their concert is a huge commitment that never really crossed my mind. I have a rule, that if I would go to a concert, I have to know at least, 5 of the band/singer’s song. And in this case, they just failed to reach the quota by placing 4 songs in my bank of knowledge, come on The XX, get yourself together. But weeks went on and there’s this particular person that birthday was coming up in a few weeks at that time, and I was going head over heels looking for a present, so fuck it, I bought the tickets for two (kudos to Ismaya for having the tickets really really cheap, I mean come on, 150.000 for The XX? ridiculous).

As a well prepared person that are half chinese, I did my research weeks before the concert. I mean, I’m not wasting any of that money for singing 4 songs at a 2 hour concert, am i? I studied their tour setlists, live performances videos, while listening to their albums back to back, days before the concert. Through that research, I found out that their live performances, like sonically, are a bit disappointing. I guess harmonizing those two distinctive, yet beautiful voices are pretty hard, as their voices are often stacked into each other and sometimes even seemed out of tuned. So based on that, I have my expectation low for this one.

So months passed by and the day of the concert came, January 23rd. I’m not really sure why, but we weren’t that excited going to the venue, and that lack of adrenaline kept on hangin as we enter the venue, waiting for the gate to open. We exchanged our e-voucher at 4 and it was really easy and fast, as not a bunch of people are already there (later on we found out that the e voucher exchange stall gets really packed at night and IsmayaLive as the promotor are criticized pretty blatantly all over social media). We had a couple of beers and entered the hall at 6.30. Kimokal was scheduled as the first opener that night, and to be honest, their performance was quite dull. But Kallula is really pretty though.

They played a 30 minutes set, and followed by the next opener that night, Elephant Kind. There’ something really interesting about Elephant Kind’s performance, and no, its not that they are an amazing performer or anything, it was an advertising stunt by Sampoerna, as the show’s main sponsor, on Elephant Kind’s set. They managed to set up the stage with three big light boxes, running tapes of Sampoerna’s ad projected on it, while the band members performed their opening song, “Beat The Ordinary” inside those boxes. Well shit, that’s kinda hard to explain, so here you go :

They performed one song in that magic box and came back to perform the rest of the set after the box are cleared off the stage. Same as Kimokal, it was a short set, 5 songs in total were performed that night, with songs from their debut and sophomore EPs Scenario I and II, and from their new album City J, that debut last year. Their performance ended at around 8.30, and The XX are scheduled to hit the stage at 9, so we all think that a 30 minutes wait won’t hurt. But 30 minutes went by and there’s still no sign of them coming out, despite the stage was all set even before 9. Another 30 minutes went by and our feet are really killing us, but finally they showed up and it certainly healed a lil bit of that pegel-pegel.

They went on the stage and the hall are immediately filled by an unbearable cheer, celebrating the end of this fuckin torture for their feet. They gave a few waves, and without further of due, Romy started to play the first note of intro, which is one of the most amazing set of instrumental tunes I’ve ever heard, my favourite The XX song, probably. It’s kinda ironic that my favorite one is the one that ain’t got nobody singing on it. The Intro set the perfect groovy tone for the rest of the concert, and the rest of the setlist just shaped perfectly concise and fulfilling. In between Intro and Crystalised, Oliver gave an apology for their lateness in a really sweet way, “I would like to, personally, apologize for taking so long to come here, I’m really, really sorry”, and their sincerity just blew me away.

From Crystalised, Islands, until the lead single from Jamie’s solo project, Loud Places were played with such energy and passion that transcends all over the venue. Overall, it was a simple, yet fulfilling performance that I personally did not expect, especially after doing my research on the band’s live performances. One thing I learnt is that you can never judge a concert by seeing one off the internet, and shit, singing out of tune is definitely forgivable. Well, as long as you put on a stage performance so amazing that people won’t pay any attention to your singing, ha!

#thexx #ismaya #ismayalive #concert #concertinjakarta #iseeyou #iseeyoutour #iseeyoutourasia #jamiexx