Romy of the xx: ‘I told Paul Mescal how much Aftersun moved me... We were at a party talking about grief’

“I’ve always been a pretty shy performer,” she says, speaking to the Irish Independent via Zoom from her London home, “and I genuinely thought that when I was recording this album [Mid Air], my inner shyness would prevent me from performing it live. I didn’t see how I could convey the energy for this music in a live show. It was like a mental block.”

She sought help — and now, she’s really glad she did. “I went and worked with a movement director, Simon Donnellon, and he really helped me let go of any self-consciousness. We had a lot of fun. DJing helped too. I’d be excited by music I was playing and I just couldn’t stand still.”

One of the first gigs she played as a solo performer was at Coachella — the fabled US music festival. She hasn’t looked back.

We’re speaking in advance of her only Irish performance this year — at the Beyond the Pale festival, Co Wicklow, next month — and Romy proves to be an engaging, open interviewee. The conversation veers into several unexpected territories.

She was still a teenager when the xx were hailed as Britain’s best new band. She and childhood friends Oliver Sim and Jamie Smith — stage name Jamie xx — released three albums together before making solo albums. The two boys were out of the blocks first. Romy finally got in on the act with the bittersweet dance pop album, Mid Air. Among other things, the album is a love letter to her wife, the photographer Vic Lentaigne.

One of the album’s most memorable tracks is Enjoy Your Life. It features the vocals of trans artist Beverly Glenn-Copeland. The American-born Canadian’s story is remarkable — for much of his life he made music that struggled to find an audience. That all changed about five years ago — well into his pension days — after taste-makers happened upon his barely heard 1986 electronica album, Keyboard Fantasies. A whole new audience was born.

“When I saw him play live,” she says, “I was struck by a beautiful line he sung: ‘My mother says to me, ‘Enjoy your life’. I thought it encapsulated so much power in just two sentences. Glenn is in his 80s now and him singing ‘My mother says to me’ — in the present tense — makes me think how nice it is for someone to keep a loved one with them always.”

The line made an indelible impact on her because it captured how she feels about her own deceased parents. “I was 11 when my mother died,” she says quietly. An only child, grief shadowed her teenage years. “And I lost my dad when I was 20. I want to keep their memories with me. Whether I intend to or not, they’re in my mind.” Her father died shortly after the xx released their self-titled debut album. Instantly hailed as a masterpiece, it went on to capture the Mercury Music Prize.

It was watching Aftersun, the film that earned Paul Mescal an Oscar nomination for a role as the lone parent of a teenage girl, that gave her a new-found appreciation for what her dad must have gone through. “There are certain films that resonate with me on a specific level and that really was one. It made me think about holidays with my dad as a single parent. I was so moved to see it portrayed, how Paul Mescal captures a dad struggling, grieving, but still trying to look after his daughter.”

She was equally enamoured with another Mescal film, All of Us Strangers, in which he and fellow Irish actor Andrew Scott played sad, troubled characters. “It also really resonated with me, especially this idea of getting to have conversations with the people that you’ve lost. What would you say if you could go back and talk to your parents as they were when you were a child but from an adult perspective?”

Romy met Mescal at a club event recently. “I tried to say to him how much I loved his film and how much it moved me. He was incredibly nice. We were at a party and talking about grief in a setting like that was probably strange.”

She pauses, caught by a thought. “Actually, that very feeling” — sadness and grief, happiness and parties — “is kind of the essence of what this album is to me. The song, Strong, is essentially me saying, ‘You don’t have to be so strong. You can let your emotions out on the dancefloor’.”

Mid Air is an album that makes particular sense in the early hours. I tell her that on several winter mornings, in the slow cross-city traffic to my daughters’ school, Romy’s album provided the soundtrack. It seemed perfect for a time when darkness gives way to morning light. The three xx albums work beautifully when the world is stirring, too.

“That’s so lovely to hear,” she says. “That’s my favourite thing, hearing how people engage with the music. I love that idea of you on a journey with your children at that time and having the music as a companion. When I was making the album, I often thought about the different scenarios in which it would be heard.”

A number of big-name producers helped her make the album, including Stuart Price — best known for his work with Madonna — and Fred Again, whose career is on a vertiginous path.

“I met Fred at a time before I even realised I was going to make a solo album and it was before he had realised his own solo album too. We both met as songwriters, having been paired together to write music for other people. We connected as friends — there were no expectations — but I found him to be a very inspiring person and when we started making music together, I felt very safe and excited.

“Stuart and I wrote a lot of the music together. A lot of the core references and music ideas were already there between Fred and I. But I’m a huge fan of big pop dance music and it was suggested that I speak to him. He came in and gave fresh ears to us, to help evolve the tracks.”

She says Price’s involvement didn’t just enhance the album, but helped her to bone up on her own production skills.

“I love learning from people and one of the best things from this project is that there was so much to pick up.”

She may well put that knowledge to good use right now because tentative work has begun on the long awaited fourth xx album. “I was in the studio last week with Oliver and Jamie and it’s nice because we’ve got new dimensions to our friendship and collaboration. We’re working on a song for the band but we’re also playing each other demos for our own solo work.

“It’s low pressure,” she adds, “and I really like that. This is the music we’re going to make as a band, but if anyone has any other ideas for our own projects, we talk about them. It feels a bit less precious [than only making a band album] and we’re really supporting each other.”

She says it’s a very different experience to the sessions for second album, Coexist. “Although we denied it at the time, we felt under a lot of pressure. It was like being under a microscope. We’d release this music and wonder, ‘What do people expect from us?’

“The first album was, basically, everything we’d ever written. It was the culmination of playing live shows in pubs and it was very much an album formed by playing live. When it came to making [third album] I See You, we wanted to avoid that feeling of pressure that was there on the second one and to be a bit more playful with the music.” The result speaks volumes. I See You is, comfortably, the loosest, most expansive album the xx have made to date. But that was in 2016. A lot has happened since then.

Romy is excited about what the band fashion next and she’s keen to make her second solo album. First though, there are live shows to play, and her first date in Ireland since the release of her album.

“Anyone who saw me play in the xx might expect me to be a certain way on stage” — subdued, shy, even slightly aloof — “but when I play my songs now, I feel completely free.”

• Romy plays the Beyond the Pale festival at Glendalough Estate, Co Wicklow (June 21 to 23). Jessie Ware and Gilla Band are among those on the line-up