I ❤️ Xiu Xiu

[Gregory Torso]

I've been listening to a lot of Xiu Xiu for the past week. I can't quite put my thoughts in order to talk about why or what that means, but they are a band I've had this hot-flush crush on and off for years and years. Started with a review of Knife Play in Peachfrock (2003?) which made me go out and buy it blind deaf unheard.

Xiu Xiu is Jamie Stewart's vision. He is currently with Angela Seo, but it's like The Fall in it, ebbs and flows of collaborators. 

Currently top of my foam-leaking knackered knocked-off Chinese Beats is the 2012 album "Always" (partly named in honour of Erasure's best song). It's one of their more accessible albums. Rather than try and write adjectives in an exhausted row in attempt to transmit feelings - here are three songs that I think sum up the whole Xiu Xiu thing pretty well.

Joey's Song The pop side of Xiu, a smershed love song to someone real (his brother in this case, he writes a lot about people he knows). John Dieterich off Deerhoof plays guitar on it (there's a Deerfhoof/XX connection, as Greg Saunier has been a sometimes part of the band since the beginning)

I Luv Abortion A jittering patch of all caps screams, synth abuse and trumpet samples. It's right to be angry when your target is right-wing backwards stupid fucking arsehole white senators trying to dictate to women what they should do with their bodies what else can you do but turn everything up and drive your fist into your keyboard. WHEN I LOOK AT MY THIGHS, I SEE DEATH! I THINK IT'S RAD! I LOVE ABORTION!

Factory Girl The quiet side. Minimal, stripped down, totally brutal. A song about Chinese women forced into shit factories to make tat forever. "The expectation that people must ruin their bodies for corporations is the most accepted rape in modernity."

You will not go to heaven... you will just go to work...

That's all I have to give right now, but there is more to talk about.

More shit, later.

[chveik]

CLAP CLAP CLAP BITCHES
WHY CUNT WHY WHY WHY CUNT

[GoblinAhFuckScary]

i was going to support xiu xiu on his last tour for a show but he cancelled :(

saw him doing a solo bit with acoustic guitar about 10 years ago

[Gregory Torso]

i was going to support xiu xiu on his last tour for a show but he cancelled :(

saw him doing a solo bit with acoustic guitar about 10 years ago

Awesome (not about the cancelling bit), I haven't seen xx live, I don't really like seeing bands live (due to self-destructive panic idiot tendencies) but I'm sure Jamie S puts on an intense show.


The Twin Peaks record Xiu Xiu did is fucken ON POINT as they says. Cuts straight to the tar pitch dripping nightmare of the woods, like taking Badalamenti's beautiful untouchable original, dipping it in a bucket of burning paint and tallow and giving it the proper pokopokopikotan treatment. Horrifiying and hypnotic. I wonder what David Lynch thinks of it (I wonder; I will not google). It's like hours in a vandalised subyway car on the lake shore with Laura Palmer and Evil Bob. Recommended night time listening. Knocks all that soft shite Witch House crap from years ago into a dented slop barrel.

[Twit 2]

Kittens played me their cover of Tracy Chapman's Fast Car and it was genuinely one of the worst things I've ever heard. Like so bad, I don't know how there wasn't some kind of intervention staged to stop it from being released. Kinda put me off exploring any further.

[Gregory Torso]

Kittens played me their cover of Tracy Chapman's Fast Car and it was genuinely one of the worst things I've ever heard. Like so bad, I don't know how there wasn't some kind of intervention staged to stop it from being released. Kinda put me off exploring any further.

That cover isn't very good, probably the weakest track on A Promise (which imo isn't one of their best albums anyway), but maybe you just didn't like Jamie Stewart's voice, in which case probably not much point exploring further.

I'm sure there's a lot of people who would describe Xiu Xiu as the worst band ever, they're pretty difficult to love. It just clicks with me. If you're not into Jamie's whole "is he being genuine? or is this a wind up" fucked up suicidal tortured bombastic persona, that's a pretty big barrier to get beyond. I don't know man, it's all good. I'm just trying to make a thread here about a band that means a lot to me. It digs into the mushy teenage loner self cremated inside my sad old adult body.

Actually I think a lot of XX's music hits me the same way horror films do. The really creepy intense stuff, not the Blumhouse jump scare theme park guff.

[Twit 2]

I'm just trying to make a thread here about a band that means a lot to me.

Sorry, mate. Don't let me stop you.

[Gregory Torso]

No no it's fine! Part of being a fan of Xiu Xiu is having people tell you how awful they are. There's a load of music out there in the world that's never even going to get heard without trying to explore a band you didn't like. I don't even know anyone in real life who likes them, even my best mate and he likes all kind of weird shit.

[rue the polywhirl]

I think they are a pretty awesome band in concept. I actually really like their recent, more poppier stuff  over the majority of their earlier catalogue but I think they excel when they cover other peoples material wholesale... Twin Peaks, Joy Division Unknown Pleasures setlist etc.

[Gregory Torso]

I think they are a pretty awesome band in concept. I actually really like their recent, more poppier stuff  over the majority of their earlier catalogue but I think they excel when they cover other peoples material wholesale... Twin Peaks, Joy Division Unknown Pleasures setlist etc.

Yeah, same. I love Knife Play because that was my first, but a lot of people think Fabulous Muscles and La Foret are their best works, and I'm not really that into those. The later albums are a bit more rounded out, I think that's the expression I want, there's more going on in the chaos of the songs.

There was an album of duets released this year featuring like Sharon Van Etton, Alice Bag, Chelsea Wolfe, Liz Harris (Grouper), and others, but I haven't had time to listen to that yet.

-

The Xiu Xiu bandcamp has some "drunk commentaries" for their albums which are pretty funny to listen to (once), a lot of personal things get brought up about the songs. On the Knife Play one, it was interesting to find out that Dr Troll is autobiographical, about Jamie Stewart's own gender dysphoria. And the utterly devastating Suha is apparently about his mother wanting to kill herself, not being able to go through with it and going into this weird little desert town where she asked some of the residents to murder her.

I mean,

I hate my body, I hate the desert
Please, let me escape
When will I be going home?
I hate my husband, I hate my childeren
I'm going to hang myself
When will I be going home?

yikes!

[chveik]

they're very hit and miss. i like Knife Play, FORGET and Girl With Basket of Fruit, but Fabulous Muscles (don't call a song 'Clowne Towne' if it's not as good as a poo-influenced vocaroo), Nina and Dear God, I Hate Myself suck so much, it might as well be a totally different band. i guess the industrial/pop with tortured vocals stuff isn't the easiest thing to pull off (unless you're Coil)

[spaghetamine]

Fabulous Muscles is a great album of theirs although to be honest I haven't been on a super deep dive into their discography, I can only really handle Jamie Stewart in small controlled doses - I don't mean this in a horrible way as there's obviously nothing wrong with it but has he ever written about anything other than his own traumatic life experiences?

[chutnut]

I got Knife Play when it came out as well, I half really liked it but half found it pretty annoying too so never bothered checking anything else out.
That Twin Peaks one sounds interesting though!

[Gregory Torso]

I don't mean this in a horrible way as there's obviously nothing wrong with it but has he ever written about anything other than his own traumatic life experiences?

Hey, he also writes about other people's traumatic life experiences! I get the feeling Xiu Xiu is his catharsis from all the dark shit, and there's a lot of that, but that's for him to work out in which ever way he feels helps, I suppose.

If you find the whole thing a bit too much, I recommend the albums they made with the Italian band Larsen, under the name XXL. Much sweeter, dronesome, lovelier stuff, especially these two songs

The Tale Of Brother Cakes and Sugar Dust

Little Mouse Of The Favelas

I think xx are sometimes better when there are more musicians involved, bringing their own thing. The record they did with Grouper is really nice, too.

[Poobum]

Do love FORGET, like the harmonies and depth. Also like their cover of Ceremony, love that frantic yet still melodic singing style.