The Horror and Happiness of Oliver Sim
nytimes.comLOS ANGELES — Oliver Sim was happy to be a monster. Too happy. On the London set of the short film “Hideous,” which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on Sunday, the 32-year-old musician was living his fanboy fantasies of becoming a creature from a horror movie. “They were like, ‘You have to relax your face, you have to stop smiling,’” Sim recently recalled, explaining how a makeup artist who was gluing a textured prosthetic to his forehead instructed him to take it down a notch.
Sim knows that he doesn’t have a reputation for smiling too much. Since he was a teenager, he’s been in the xx, a band whose minimalist take on post-punk is synonymous with moody restraint and understatement.
Thirteen years after the group’s debut, he’s putting out his first solo album, and while it isn’t exactly a laugh-a-minute, it’s coated in a gloss of humor and camp.
The album’s title, “Hideous Bastard,” gives a good indication of the cheeky melodrama it contains. “I think it’s a bit more of who I am as an individual and not one of three,” Sim said.
