Melissah Yang/Neon Tommy

Before the British indie pop band came on, opening acts from 2:54 and John Talabot first took the stage. 

London sister duo 2:54 began as the sun was beginning to set and evoked a laidback coolness in their attitudes on stage. In a way though, they were almost too cool. Just as 2:54 tried to ignore the slow trickling of people still entering the damp field, the audience was more or less unaware of them on stage.

Typically, artists that are sandwiched in between acts tend to get lost, but second act John Talabot and Pional fit their role well as both a transition and a lead-up to The xx. With deadmau5's recent diatribe about how all DJs press play, it was refreshing to see live percussions being done with their DJ setups. 

2:54’s retro-indie rock and John Talabot’s soft electro-driven beats were like The xx deconstructed, but The xx quickly showed why they were the headliners at Hollywood Forever. 

The xx’s set was like a conversation between artist and audience that would happen the night before an apocalyptic disaster: amplified yet still, subtle but overpowering. 

The set list was well mixed of old and new songs. In fact, The xx played all 11 tracks from their debut album “xx” and intermixed them with their newer songs from “Coexist.” 

The show began with “Angels,” the first song off of “Coexist,” as a large white sheet lightly veiled the stage like a dark, virginal bride of the dead. 

Romy Madley-Croft’s whispery, smoky vocals bled through the sheet, and muted white lights softly casted on her face. Oliver Sim swayed as if in a trance, letting Croft take the lead, while often-overlooked third member Jamie xx stayed in the back shadows putting down layers of quiet beats. 

Even before the sheet dropped, the audience was theirs. 

Sim played to the crowd standing below him, often moving towards the front of the stage into screams from both male and female fans. With every crash in “Infinity,” Sim would slow-mo whip his hair and slide lingering looks of angst as his hair fell back from his face. 

Croft was more reserved, staying close to her mic stand, but her voice and guitar seemed to reach further back and wash over the hundreds of fans lying out on blankets. 

What made The xx so captivating in spite of downplayed staging and lights was Croft, Sim, and Jamie xx’s abilities to collaboratively vibe with each other and with the audience. 

During interludes of "Islands," Croft and Sim would swing back towards Jamie xx’s booth with their heads hung low, as if performing by themselves in an abandoned warehouse in downtown Los Angeles. Then, their eyes would open – Sim’s fixated on the audience and Croft’s up into the night sky – and the lyrical journey would begin again. 

The entire performance felt surreal for both the audience and The xx. Sim thanked the crowd twice and said that performing in Los Angeles and seeing the Hollywood sign in the distance was like a dream for them too. Before The xx played the final song of the night, “Stars,” Sim ran off stage and grabbed a camera to take a photo of the crowd. 

Once the show ended and people slowly trekked through the cemetery past tombstones and mausoleums, every single body at Hollywood Forever — both dead and alive — was still in a trance from The xx. 

Reach Staff Reporter Melissah Yang here. Follow her on Twitter.