Xiu Xiu - What The Christ?

yes... what?

Lots of news in their latest email. They really buried the lede by belatedly announcing that the ZZ Top/Bottom cover 7" is "out now" (been out for over a month), but some much more pertinent news, both good and bad, in there:

-new Xiu Xiu album & world tour in early 2019
-new Jamie solo album (his first) out on Record Store Day & North American tour + handful of EU and Russia dates in April
-vinyl reissue of A Promise with bonus tracks. digital version includes drunk commentary from Jamie
-Shayna Dunkelman, who played with Jamie at the two shows I saw last year, has been fired. From the email: "Sadly, we had to let Shayna Dunkelman go from Xiu Xiu. Despite the bantying about of numerous bizarre and vile speculations (oh wretched internet) the true reasons, while frustrating and extremely infuriating to us, are neither salacious nor titillating."

wtf is a "Jamie solo album" lol

is SD the one that was in the "Sharp Dressed Man" AV Club video?

I have been revisiting this band over the past week and they're even better than I thought they were the first time around (and I already thought they were the best band)

Too bad about Shayna :(

Yeah too bad, she's great. Really enjoyed her Trap Set interview.

is SD the one that was in the "Sharp Dressed Man" AV Club video?

yes

What about that album that was literally Jamie on solo guitar and vocals playing "I'll Fly Away" etc, was that called Xiu Xiu?

thanks jordan, didn't feel like doing xiu xiu related google image searches at work

ha Simon I had the same thought. obviously a technicality, as all Xiu Xiu albums have featured other players. Very excited for his solo tour, really hope he comes back here, first time I saw Xiu Xiu was in 2012 and it was just Jamie. One of the most powerful & immense sets I've ever seen. Both shows I saw last year w/ Jamie & Shayna were great, despite a really weak turnout the second time. circa1916 was there and said Jamie was completely despondent after the show, just sitting on a crate in the back with his head in his hands. but J & S had great chemistry, and apparently Shayna was fired the day after the Chicago Twin Peaks show, which was just a week or two ago. Did some digging but have no idea why she was let go.

"digital version includes drunk commentary from Jami"

:D

Good news about the new albums, but Shayna leaving is sad :(

he's been doing the drunk commentaries for a while now, has anyone actually listened to any of them?

I haven't, it's new to me. Is it on reissues or something? I've got all the original stuff so am not inclined to buy any reissue tbh

just on the digital versions on their bandcamp. that would be a pretty bizarre and... impractical thing to press on vinyl ha! although that would be a trip

Honestly your summary of the newsletter was the first I heard of it! Ash did it on 1977, barfing and drunk talk on vinyl to end the album.

It doesn't sound very appealing, drunk commentary, tbh.

yeah I agree, I can only imagine it compounding the crushing abyssal sadness & depression of most Xiu Xiu music. although I would listen to drunk commentary for The Air Force, that's the only record they've made I consider a stone cold classic top to bottom.

A Promise, Fabulous Muscles, Knife Play all stone cold classic to me. Still wouldn't go near a drunk commentary by mister Stewart on any one of those tbf

what wtf happened with shayna? that was stunningly weird and unprofessional and then I forgot all about it. Just say she isn't there anymore, don't say you fired her and then say "oh it's not that salacious". drama queens.

I've only seen xiu xiu twice, once was many years ago, and the last time was the twin peaks show, which she was at, and she seemed pretty integral to that. too bad.

yeah they were great together both times i saw them in 2017. it was just jamie & shayna. now that i remember it, jamie mentioned at one of those shows that they last time they played here 'it was with the worst ever xiu xiu lineup, sorry' (circa 2011, jamie & two dudes i don't remember). i mean i remember right after i became obsessed with the air force, caralee mcelroy left the band under similar vaguely acrimonious circumstances, her quiting/firing entirely unexplained.

jamie doesn't seem like someone who's a joy to work with frankly

ha ha ha to say the least

Jamie Stewart -
An Aggressive, Chain Smoking Alcoholic
Record Store Day 2018
Pinyon Records
First solo record and
horror show https://t.co/HZvqkCHyzh pic.twitter.com/tj4kZQ4ub0

— Xiu Xiu (@XiuXiuforLife) March 6, 2018

that's a link to a new interview btw

Good title.

I assumed that his solo modular synth record would be either noise or just forgettable, but this is really engaging: https://www.tinymixtapes.com/chocolate-grinder/premiere-jamie-stewart-xiu-xiu-inconsistent-and-peculiar-volume

I like the song with Mitski a lot. I could go for an album of that.

his recent noise album An Aggressive, Chain Smoking Alcoholic released under Jamie Stewart is v. good

has anyone been keeping up with the "Drugs" series Jamie is doing? he's up to volume 6 now. he keeps saying that Angela hates it but I can't tell if that's a bit or not

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkK6GT4pkbU

new album girl with basket of fruit out in feb

Fuck yes

love the drums :)

Awesome

oh man

https://polyvinyl-public.s3.amazonaws.com/87efe7b5fa21d969f4ca491ed04b0149_b1afeb4311ea30bd96daabf36f359ea236aa2907_medium.jpg

goddammit i already have a velvet robe

omg where did you find that

help yourself

https://www.polyvinylrecords.com/store/xiu_xiu_girl_with_basket_of_fruit?mc_cid=0a4e5aac30&mc_eid=34c8c17ba7

perfect couples gift for winter ty

bumped another thread but since there's a thousand Xiu Xiu threads here thought I would share again that this new record is REALLY out there, even for them. in terms of abrasiveness / non-songy / insane it's second only to Angel Guts as the most crazy proper Xiu Xiu album.

Yeah I hear you. It’s a shame that nobody seems to care about this guy anymore, consistently one of the most interesting artists working imo.

yeah it's such a drag, especially considering how prolific he is. he had that Chain Smoking Alcoholic solo album last year and like 6 of those Drugs albums. it is strange that people aren't interested anymore, I feel like the running themes of his work (abuse, sexual violence, depression, suicide, addiction, hopelessness) are even more relevant today than they were in the 00s.

Have you heard the new one? What do you make of it, if you have?

I just heard the Pumpkin Attack song on Spotify and really liked it. Haven’t heard the whole new album yet, looking forward to it.

His Chain Smoking Alcoholic noise album was really good and of course slept on.

ironically the song on the flexi disc that came with the LP is a pretty straightforward song in comparison

I have a reverse opinion, that he’s an amazing noise artist with a wider audience than his genre/music necessarily deserves, genre/economy-wise (tho all his concerts should always be vastly sold out)

Personally I preferred the Depeche Mode-via-avant garde descendent of the first two albums to anything that came after, until Red Guts and this new one, which reinvent the aesthetic of noise but with idk hard to describe but aggressively hi-fi production choices, which is neither better or worse, it just is, but it’s extremely relistenable— I cant judge Girl/Fruit or Red Guts on the same metric as Knife Play or A Promise

But I don’t know anybody who writes well about this band

new one sounding really good and super abrasive and fun

otm about it being extremely relistenable, it's definitely his most beguiling record. I haven't read along with the lyrics yet

I definitely think Xiu Xiu will always be wrongly-rated because there is far more going on here than people realize (including myself). I don't think his songs are about (abuse, sexual violence, depression, suicide, addiction, hopelessness) but are pretty much, across the board, about mental garble, about the dissociative response one experiences when faced with the difficult-to-bear. He's not singing about war itself, he's singing about the feeling of reading about the war, watching TV about the war. I don't find his music comforting because he's singing anything meaningful about anything so much as I deeply identify on a personal level with the mind-spewing-information-as-a-result-of-next-to-nothing feeling that his songs seem to attempt to capture

Pumpkin Attack sounds like industrial techno. Is this his dance music record?

xp maybe The Air Force is an outlier but that record deals with that stuff pretty directly - songs like Vulture Piano, PJ in the Streets, Buzz Saw, Save Me Save Me - but broadly I agree, something like Support Our Troops or I Luv Abortion, that's exactly it - unfiltered live wire trauma garble.

I definitely think Xiu Xiu will always be wrongly-rated because there is far more going on here than people realize (including myself). I don't think his songs are about (abuse, sexual violence, depression, suicide, addiction, hopelessness) but are pretty much, across the board, about mental garble, about the dissociative response one experiences when faced with the difficult-to-bear. He's not singing about war itself, he's singing about the feeling of reading about the war, watching TV about the war. I don't find his music comforting because he's singing anything meaningful about anything so much as I deeply identify on a personal level with the mind-spewing-information-as-a-result-of-next-to-nothing feeling that his songs seem to attempt to capture

very good post imo

ok this might be the best thing he's ever done

ok this might be the best thing he's ever done

― flappy bird, Friday, February 8, 2019 9:56 PM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink