As a teenager,Romy Madley Croftburned CDs to play in gay clubs, loading them with unabashed floor-fillers like Ultra Nats cathartic house hit Free and Ian Van Dahls elegiac Euro-trance anthem Castles in the Sky. She later went on to become guitarist and co-lead singer ofthe xx, the influential indie band she founded with her school friendsOliverandJamie. Together, they were masters of the spaces in between, their intimate ballads built around sparse guitar riffs and fleeting tableaux. But she cast her mind back to her queer club dayswhen pop was appreciatedwithout cynicism or ironyafter she startedwritingforstars likeDua LipaandHalsey, in collaboration with EDM collagistFred again..(real name Fred Gibson). Somewhere along the way, she began to realize that she wanted to keep some of these euphoric hooks for herself.

On her debut solo albumMid Air, Romy works with Gibson and Stuart Price, the producer best known for his work onMadonnasConfessions on a Dance Floor,to capture some of the heady magic of those early nightlife experiences. The result is a meticulously crafted homage to the strobe-lit, chart-topping dance music of the 1990s and 2000sthough, at times, it misses some of the tension that made Romys songwriting with the xx so vital.Jamie xxreunites with his former bandmate for the ebullient come-up of Enjoy Your Life, aBeverly Glenn-Copeland-sampling banger that might also have sounded at home on his own 2015 debut,In Colour. There are thumping Euro-trance homages in the form of Strong and Did I, where wisps of Romys vocals dovetail with acidic synths. Elsewhere, over the mournful Balearic pulse of The Sea, her sighs stretch out like glimmers of light on the surface of the Mediterranean.

Romy is at her best when her songsrather than radiating one straightforward, effusive emotionhave some element of contrapuntal friction, similar to that of the xxs earliest sketches. On Loveher, she sings of holding hands with a lover under the table, not because of shame, but because some things are for us. These delicate, whispered lines oscillate between the competing desires to stand proud in your identity and to keep your intimacy intimate. While writing for the xx, Romy avoided using gendered pronouns in her songsits notable that she not only uses them, but makes them central to the songs onMid Air. In the UK, we are living through a period of increasing bigotry, with anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes on the rise, and transphobia poisoning the well of the government and mainstream media. Romy’s voice may be hushed, but in this climate, her message is loud and clear. Pitchfork