This is Romy Madley Croft describing the earliest years of The xx, her landmark group with Oliver Sim and Jamie xx. For fans of indie music in the late ‘00s, the band was an inescapable presence and something of a game changer. Beloved for their haunting, sparsely furnished songs and hushed, intimate delivery, The xx also was at the vanguard of a new generation of guitar-based bands who fluidly adopted cutting edge electronic production techniques without resorting to the cliché of the club mix. As so-called bass artists like Burial, Darkstar and Joy Orbison infused moody, dread-infused dubstep with rich emotion, longing and nostalgia, The xx went the other direction. The band applied the same hollowing-out to indie rock that once carved dubstep out of the kinetic mass that was drum ‘n’ bass. What was left felt like an artifact from outside time - one part Joy Division, one part lo fi, lopsided 2 step, one part MySpace-era confessional, informed by club nights but not of them and fused into something indelible and utterly new.

Written when they were still in high school, sometimes over iChat, their debut album xx was an instant classic and critical darling. Though the band had operated with an embryonic shyness, they soon found themselves with a Mercury Prize and a multi-year world tour. Fast forward 15 years and the group has built on their early success in remarkable ways. A pair of followup albums - 2012’s Coexist and 2017’s I See You - gently developed their signature sound into something richer and bolder without sacrificing the understated confidence that made them so unique. Jamie xx went from being the low key beat tinkerer to a fully-fledged producer, working alongside Gil Scott-Heron on 2011’s I’m New Here and releasing In Color in 2015. The group collaborated with Raf Simons, organized a festival, curated a film series, and generally kept busy. In 2022, Oliver Sim released his own solo record, Hideous Bastard. But little has been heard from Madley Croft since the group’s last album came out almost seven years ago.

That changed last September, with the release of Mid Air, her new solo album. Credited to simply Romy, Mid Air is a brisk and bright counter to The xx’s more downcast profile, tipping completely into the dance side of their live/electronic balancing act. The album’s influences bridge the past and the present. On the one hand, Romy draws on her memories of the London queer clubs she explored as a teenager and her youthful love of eurodance. On the other, a rekindled relationship with photographer/director, and now-wife Vic Lentaigne was the direct inspiration for the album’s most striking moments. Lyrics like “I heard someone say that when you know you know / and that it’s OK not to take it slow / ’cause I don’t want to grow without her” leave The xx’s fragile ambiguity in the dust. In fact, Romy’s unfiltered frankness fueled the couple’s budding romance as Lentaigne was giving her feedback on the album and realized the depth of her partner’s feelings. (Imagine hearing “She's on my mind, but I wish she was under me” and figuring out it was about you.)

For someone as historically shy as Madley Croft, (“I don’t think I felt like I could do [a solo album] self-confidence wise. And I didn’t have a burning desire to have all the attention on me.”) Mid Air’s burst of energy sees her in full stride, letting it all out. Whereas she previously was shaken by critiques of her pop-dance DJing at xx afterparties, she’s now curating an entire club experience for each show called Club Mid Air, which comes to Knockdown Center on March 29th. The event is a night of DJs and performances that build on the energy of the album. A music video shows her smiling as she performs at the center of a sweaty mass of club kids, and a recent Boiler Room set was a triumphantly fun throwdown.

“I find shelter in this way / Undercover hideaway / Can you hear when I say / ‘I have never felt this way’?” she once sang on the skeletal “Shelter.” It’s tempting to read the song’s naked vulnerability and trembling, furtive energy as the cocoon phase to the flamboyance of Mid Air. But perhaps a more rewarding reading is to see them as opposite sides of the same coin. At every stage of her career, Romy has shown a remarkable gift for telling it like it is. Whether she’s quietly baring her soul as a teenager or letting her hair down as a grown woman in love, it’s all part of the same fearless commitment to open expression. “This album is an invitation to dance,” she told NME. Let’s party.