In the grips of winter’s future-obscuring spell, a surprisingly swollen crowd convene, battling the freeze to experience The xx, indisputably one of 2009’s It bands. As best as they can, the lovers-strewn congregation shelters in the embrace of the combo’s debut album, its private, yearning mystique all the more enchanting when prettily lit and made flesh by its now three-dimensional authors. The last pixel of May sunshine is extinguished from our mind-photo and the glow of less inhospitable times is made an ethereous memory. If ever there was a winter band, The xx is that band.

Live, just as if we are at home under the covers, the measured caresses are immersive. The economy and understatement are very much worth cherishing in this day and age. It takes a certain kind of self-belief to purge your pop of pomp and flash, and it’s harder still to make the music as addictive and persuasive as the Londoners have, without relying on trite hooks and pulse-racing crescendos. Have no doubts though – this is still pop music, just a type that has become rare these days; an edgy, unfussy, naked and considered kind that holds fast to a personal vision that ticks and creaks like contracting metal, with rarely a single moment pushed on us for empty effect.

With both their voices sounding gorgeous and true, Romy Madely-Croft and Oliver Sim’s hive-mind murmurs pillow talk to an unnamed third-party. In steady procession, they draw evenly from their uniformly perfect suite of bedsit-noir confections with apparently no wish to interact with the crowd, short of Oliver’s apologies – presented in the voice of a sedated Barry White – for the sometimes soupy sound or for the possibility that they’ll botch b-side ‘Do You Mind’. Romy looks at the front rows tiredly while the talismanic Jamie Smith is just too busy filling for the dearly departed Baria Qureshi to even look up from his panel of toys. Though they were never going to be full of quips or keen to amp up the crowd, the subdued performance renders the gig a mite too much like a sitting or a recital, rather than a show. Often the songs kind of just lie there after deployment, like an open book.

Yet, it’s churlish to begrudge a faithful run-through. The puritanically retrained, almost contrary tracks were never intended for taking flight for the Big Finish. And for the most part, they are played with a conviction and passionate intent that must be difficult to muster at the back end of a long headline tour, so if the performance is muted, it’s of little consequence to the overall experience. Whilst not all of the spooky, bewitching charm of their debut album is preserved, it’s such an incisive expression of the stillness of witching hour London, a strikingly original record birthed under the hum of sodium-emitting streetlights, that it withstands the ravages of a shuffling, live venue, almost. Almost, if not for an irreverent minority of saloon-rowdy shits, mostly dwelling at the back of the room, seemingly at a totally different event and extolling the psychedelic properties of Kasabian’s latest album, or something equally as asinine.

But if the more intangible elements of the band’s aesthetic perish, the basics remain. The great song-writing and catchy melodies flourish in spite of the prevailing thrum. Beginning, appropriately, with ‘Intro’, our appetites are whetted despite an overbearing low end. It is followed by ‘VCR’, sucking us deeper into the abyss. ‘Islands’ and ‘Heart Skipped A Beat’ retain their time-slowing, incubating power and ‘Shelter’, both sterile and lush; suggestive but naïve, is a highlight and worth the cost of admission alone, provoking a generous round of applause.

Consisting of the likes of ‘Basic Space’, ‘Infinity’ and the amazing ‘Fantasy’, a more lively (and crucially louder) second act keeps the Kaiser Chiefs fan club from yapping obliviously at the top of their voices. Romy’s ionised picking provides subtle shading and delicate filigree over Oliver’s stern-sounding bass, with the feline, geezer-chic 20-year-old draped in gold necklaces and sporting the classic garb of a Nineties D&B pioneer: a black polo neck. They finish with Oliver smashing a rhythm into Jamie’s cymbal and depart for their next appointment as their delectable reformulation of Florence And The Machine’s pish version of ‘You Got The Love’ booms from the PA. Goodbye kids, hurry back. Now to the headphones and the dark winter night. John Calvert