Xiu Xiu - What The Christ?

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

I interviewed Jamie.. he's a sweetheart

I don't know anyone who writes well about this band

You want to talk about Weyes Blood, I want to talk about Girl with Basket Of Fruit

I mean it’s not easy tbh. xp

He should be one hundred times more popular than he is though.

touring with AJJ and Emperor X next year, joined by Jonathan Meiburg....this makes up for them cancelling their last tour. really stoked for that.

that time again...

new album of duets 'oh no' out march 26th

some exciting features on there!

shoulda gone with

xiu xiuets

I'm not surprised that Jamie Stewart has an impressive Rolodex by now but that is indeed a tasty lineup:

1. Sad Mezcalita (Sharon Van Etten)
2. I Cannot Resist (Deb Demure / Drab Majesty)
3. The Grifters (Haley Fohr / Circuits des Yeux )
4. Goodbye For Good (Greg Saunier / Deerhoof)
5. OH NO (Susanne Sachsse)
6. Rumpus Room (Angus Andrew / Liars)
7. Fuzz Gong Fight (Angela Seo / Xiu Xiu)
8. I Dream of Someone Else Entirely (Owen Pallett)
9. One Hundred Years (Chelsea Wolfe) [The Cure cover]
10. A Classic Screw (Fabrizio Modonese Palumbo)
11. It Bothers Me All the Time (Jonathan Meiburg / Shearwater)
12. Saint Dymphna (George Lewis Jr. / Twin Shadow)
13. Knock Out (Alice Bag)
14. A Bottle of Rum (Liz Harris / Grouper)
15. ANTS (Valerie Diaz)

One Hundred Years (Chelsea Wolfe) [The Cure cover]

oh hell yeah

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yialek4fUUg

^^ the song w/ Grouper is good!

He's the greatest

I've seen him live a dozen times and I just wanna see him again

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

Every time my partner and I have tried to see him/them has been stymied, the show either didn't happen or was canceled (pre- and post-pandemic). :(

BRO that has happened to me too!! I've had tickets three or four times!

The one I was most annoyed about happened at a little venue here in DC--as the show was starting, the sound system's snake had gotten unplugged and the entire system had to be set up again. They couldn't effectively do sound check, the guy on the soundboard wouldn't stop playing the pre-show mix or communicate with the band at all to work it out. This shit lasts until there's fifteen minutes or so left before a hard out being enforced by the venue because a salsa dance party was scheduled immediately after the show. Jamie had the set list written on a paper plate, which he chucked into the audience saying, "If you catch this, tell us what you want to hear. Just...I recommend you don't start with your favorite song, because...then it's all downhill from there."

The little bit they played was awesome. Can't wait to see a full show some day.

Cursed! I'm sure I've posted this multiple times upthread, but the first time was an outdoor college show where Dirty Beaches played a noise set, but apparently some crucial loop pedal or sampler broke and Jamie couldn't/wouldn't play. We ran into him in the parking lot and he gave us a bunch of 7"s though!

OH NO sounding really good so far, his most accessible since Always maybe. title track reminds of some of the early records.

also he has very very sneakily become quite a skilled vocalist over the years huh?

guest appearance by the screaming toy ducks from vine on that shearwater collab

I can't remember the last time I've done this--or if I've ever done this--but wtf is with this p4k review of the new album?

It’s difficult to be a Xiu Xiu fan, mostly because it means you have to listen to so much Xiu Xiu music [...] Stewart has spent the last 20 years blazing an illegible path, musically and morally, between queer politics and shock-jock shtick, radical vulnerability and repugnant cruelty, good faith and bad taste. The music varies wildly in style—from punky folk and dreamy pop to experimental electronics and harsh noise, all teeming with global instruments—and quality, from the heart-filled zenith of “I Luv the Valley, OH!” to the heartless nadir of “I Luv Abortion.” For every song you’d defend with your last breath, there’s another you couldn’t defend with your first. Most perverse is when they blend into the likes of “Ale,” a gorgeous tune about telling an overweight woman playing GameCube to shut up.

and this is a GOOD review!

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/xiu-xiu-oh-no/

or rather, a positive one (7.0)... what Xiu Xiu song is anywhere close to "indefensible," and on what grounds?

I don't know about "indefensible" and it's been a long time since I listened to those early records, but there some very, very bleak songs and a few about the horrific violence of war that I can absolutely understand someone having a hard time sitting through.

so, the author of that piece lives in the town Jamie called home, and shat on every chance he got, for several years. said author also edits the local independent free weekly. I don't wanna do a lot of talking out of school but Jamie's hatred of the town was weird for the people t/here who love the place and were happy to have him here, who loved & continued to love his music. his hatred of the town was visceral though and these dynamics inform your hearing of his music going forward, if you happen to have a stake in the town.

Well that certainly makes the piece less mystifying!

xp "hard time to sit through," definitely, but we're not talking about Chicago

I hate ilxtown too and still live here.

Excited to hear this one. I lost track of this band, but fabulous muscles and dear god i hate myself are incredible albums.

La Foret was the last one I bought before losing track for many years, but I got reacquainted with his work a few years ago and now I think Forget is his best record. Looking forward to making time for the new one.

as far as indefensible things he's done go the first that comes to mind is the A Promise album cover