The xx were expert at creating an intimate sound despite lyrics that kept audiences at a respectable distance from their band members’ personal lives. Their co-lead singer Oliver Sim’s debut solo album, Hideous Bastard, favours a different approach, eschewing emotional vagueness in favour of lyrics with the disarming candour of a diary entry.

Now aged 33, Sim has lived with HIV since he was 17, and the long shadow of shame that’s followed him after his diagnosis lies at the heart of each song, from the lurching anti-rhythms of lead single ‘Romance With A Memory’ to the album’s confessional opener ‘Hideous’. But this isn’t a work of self-flagellation. It’s a successful therapy session, moving from revelation to acceptance in the space of ten carefully structured songs.

Beyond its lyrical concerns, Hideous Bastard is musically as close to a new album from The xx as fans are likely to get. While Jamie xx (who produced the album) and Romy Madley Croft’s solo work has pivoted into dance and electronica, Sim cleaves to his band’s signature sound, adding a new-found snarl and sense of synth experimentation to his familiar playground of minimalist production design and breathy vocals.

The seductive spark that made The xx so popular is never far off, creating an intriguing tension between Sim’s harsh lyrics and the slow uncoiling of each song, making his divergences from the formula all the more thrilling, like the sudden Lynchian guitar outro of ‘Sensitive Child’. There are points where the magic fades (as in the aimless drones of ‘GMT’, ‘Saccharine’ and ‘Confident Man’) but overall Hideous Bastard solves a problem that eluded The xx when their sonic range led them to a creative cul-de-sac, taking his band’s wilting style and giving it grit. 

Released by Young on Friday 9 September.