Xiu Xiu

[Why I Hate Tables]

I've searched but not found a Xiu Xiu thread and this seems a bit of an oversight, so here goes. I've got into Xiu Xiu quite a bit lately, having been aware of them for ages and played a handful of their/his (the one constant member Jamie Stewart sometimes works alone) tracks to death but recently it's just turned into something else.

If you've not heard Xiu Xiu, imagine if you will a non-racist Morrissey, unafraid to artistically mature, with more eclectic reference points and capable of writing in perspectives of that other than a sexually confused adolescent (quite creepy when you're over 50 and still banging on in that way, not as much as Brian Wilson's arrested development high school songs but still). Imagine this parallel universe Morrissey decided to write a musical based on a Dennis Cooper book. This is a pretty good way to sum up a Xiu Xiu album for the uninitiated, but still doesn't do it justice.

One of the reasons I like Xiu Xiu is Stewart does a lot of things that irritate me when other artists do them but in a way that makes me love them. The adrenaline rush, manically delivered I Luv Abortion from last year's Always album could spill over into camp and reek of forced shock tactics, but Stewart's delivery of "I love abortion, you were too good for this world" moves me in a way I wouldn't expect it to. My normal reaction would be to shrug, or sneer, or laugh it off but in a Xiu Xiu song it hits me square in the heart.

Probably the best known Xiu Xiu track would be I Love The Valley (Oh!) from the Fabulous Muscles album, my introduction to them and the track I played to death when I first heard them. At first the lyrics washed over me, sounding pretty standard "intense post-punk ballad" set to that Joy Division type riff, slaveship drums and little odd-sonic touches dotted throughout. Then I listened to them, and to the lyrics of other songs on the same album and it was just too close to home. Sometimes they're vague enough it could fit your life, or a lot of other people's: that's how these huge, bland monster arena bands are so big, that mass marketed intimacy. It's also how Bunny Gamer wormed it's way into my head and heart. It was easy to attach to the romantic situation I was in when I heard it, just as it's easy to attach to a lot of bad relationships.

Sometimes, though, as in the Fabulous Muscles title track (a lust song, fetishising oral sex with a violent closet case) it's so personal to Stewart that you almost flinch. Or laugh and turn away. There's a brutality in Stewart's fragile, trembling voice on these tracks that a thousand sludge-metal bands could never hope to compare to (unless Justin Broadrick is a member, then they have a fighting chance). This side of Xiu Xiu's work is great, and reaches places other artists just can't touch, but sometimes it's just too much when you haven't got the time to go there emotionally.

Luckily, he also writes great art-pop songs like Hi (from Always) or Gray Death (from Dear God I Hate Myself). Enough of my dribblings: what'd you think?

[KLG-7C]

I've had one experience. Heard this years ago (a long time. Must have been when it first came out) and thought it was pretentious. Not so bothered by it now.

[levitica]

There was a thread on Xiu Xiu a long time ago, they were generally condemned as pretentious hipster shite.  I like them, though my friends who went to see them with me still hate me for it.  I think you do have to be a pervert, depressed or in some other way The Smithsy type or it does not appeal. 

After reading Jamie Stewart's twitter though I'm worried his success drives him to adopt a persona that might be destructive for him.  I'm putting him in next year's Death Pool for sure.

[Mark Steels Stockbroker]

They did a cover of "Asleep" by The Smiths. Can't remember much about it.

[Why I Hate Tables]

The Smiths cover's not worth revisiting or remembering, really, adds little to the original.

They're certainly a band that inspires people to misuse the word pretentious - as far as I can see, what'd be far more pretentious would be if he started writing the kind of studiedly blank, distanced tripe a lot of people are churning out (and even within the same type of music as Xiu Xiu, except instead of writing non-specific platitudes these artists are doing the kind of point missing "transgression as genre" nonsense that should've died out long ago). I guess I like Xiu Xiu for the same reason a lot of people would dislike them, and the same reason I like Dennis Cooper: it's nice to hear someone airing the thoughts you don't necessarily share with people through their art in a time when fewer artists are making any kind of statement. Unfortunately, both are easy (and understandably so) to misinterpret.

I've never understood condemning something just because hipsters like or pretend to like it. Somewhere along the way the word hipster got perverted to mean idiot trend-hoppers instead of the innovators: has it meant that since the 50's? I don't tend to use the word, I just tend to call them "try hard trendy dickheads". Life's too short to pretend to like art you don't like.

[KLG-7C]

They're certainly a band that inspires people to misuse the word pretentious

Don't mistake a subjective interpretation of pretentious that differs from yours as misuse. I think that the shouting mad things in the song I linked to is supposed to be impressive, but it isn't. Pretentious.

I've never understood condemning something just because hipsters like or pretend to like it. Somewhere along the way the word hipster got perverted to mean idiot trend-hoppers instead of the innovators: has it meant that since the 50's? I don't tend to use the word, I just tend to call them "try hard trendy dickheads". Life's too short to pretend to like art you don't like.

You're misunderstanding why people use that label for things. It's not "Oh, hipsters would like this, so I will choose to not like it". It's actually "This is terrible. Vapid, empty posturing. I hate it. It's the sort of thing a hipster/try-hard trendy dickhead would like".

[Why I Hate Tables]

I thought pretentious meant "pretending to be something that it clearly isn't" or "trying to" and I can't see how this is pretending to be anything that it isn't. The shouting mad things bits make me laugh, that's just my interpretation of them of course, but I can't see how a guy as self aware as Stewart is wouldn't see the comedy in his overdramatic yelping of "THIS IS THE WORST VACATION EVER I'M GOING TO SPLIT YOUR HEAD OPEN". I much prefer the acoustic version of that song on Fag Patrol where that line's delivered in a hostile whisper. It's that kind of dark comedy that often underpins those moments of madness, where on some level you realise how ridiculous you're being even as it's happening.

[Mark Steels Stockbroker]

Something is pretentious if its creator's ambitions far outstrip its actual qualities. Like a student film that the makers clearly rate as deep and important as Bergman, but is merely badly filmed with no plot and negligable characterisation.

Luke Bozier might be pretentious, but it's not clear how seriously he rates himself as a pioneering tech visionary. That stuff's all part of the territory, it might just be the sort of guff he feels obliged to spout in order to get financial backing, and doesn't really believe in it.

Several authors published in Zero Books are pretentious, given the gulf between the great analytical feats they think they're achieving, and the half-baked Cultural Studies quoteathons they actually have to offer.

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

I've seen them live twice, both times in Moscow. The second time was last year, when they were supporting Wire who were playing in the some would say not- suitable environs of a theatre. I liked their last album, because what's not to like about an album containing a song entitled 'I Love Abortion"? I mentioned this to the fellow at the merchandise stallwho sold me a fetching Xiu Xiu t-shirt featuring the image of a cat crawling through barbed wire, who seemed a cheery type, asking me where I was from, commenting on the unseasonable snow and ice (it was late April), and that. When I asked if he and his female cohort were friends of the band, he replied with "we *are* the band, dude.", which later turned out to be true, augmented with two further members on stage.They did a jolly rousing cover version of Joy Division's "Twenty Four Hours", and went down quite well, as I seem to recall. That's all I have to say on Xiu Xiu.