Music

Xiu Xiu

Sian Rowe | Sunday 3 October, 2010 18:55

It almost feels wrong to talk out-loud about Xiu Xiu. For years Jamie Stewart’s strange, soft voice has tumbled out of my stereo speakers, from the early crackles of ‘Chapel of The Chimes’ to ‘Women As Lovers’ soundtracking bus journeys with broken headphones.

Their frustrated electronic monologues are the accompaniment to teen, to twenty-something and probably thirthy-something angst, and filled with such overt, cut-up emotion that they’re almost embarrassing to listen to with someone else in case they call you up on being an unbearable whiner or, worse, pin you down and check your wrists for scars. These are songs to thump your fists against the table to, conjuring up images of half emaciated boys working on their own ‘Fabulous Muscles’ or girls smashing mirrors because they’re fed up with what they’re looking at. Even their name, a soft choo-choo taken from the Chinese film ‘Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl’, is difficult to pronounce.

Jamie, sitting in his Durham, South Carolina home, makes it a little bit easier to get chatting. He’s been working as part of the band since 2002, following spells in cult favourites IBOPA (The Indestructible Beat of Palo Alto) and Ten in the Swear Jar; all that time in bands has made explaining himself a little easier. It helps that his troubles during that period (the loss of his father, spells of alcoholism, admitting his bisexuality) have been well documented, and while some artists in similar position might shy away, he laughs openly at anything from TV (Curb Your Enthusiasm being a particular favourite) to the state of his town’s water supply (not so good) to, yes, his “dark side”. As if his relationship with Xiu Xiu fans, with whom he often exchanges art projects, mix tapes and shirts, weren’t enough to convince listeners that he’s not some grump in the corner.

“It’s still absolutely biographical,” he says of the this year’s record, ‘Dear God, I Hate Myself’. “When we started the band we knew that the songs almost had to be about real people and real experiences”.

In the last few albums they’ve tackled everything from their feelings about the War (“Did you know you were going to shoot off the top of a 4-year-old girl’s head?”) to the frontman’s love of sweets (“Chocolate Makes You Happy”). The not-so-gothic Jennifer Lopez even got a name-check on the 2003 release ‘Fag Patrol’. “We’ll always write about our families, or experiences, or maybe even our politics,” he adds, going on to explain that he hopes the band aren’t confined to one musical trajectory.

But this much is apparent. Save for the belief in biographical lyrics told through Jamie and an ear for dramatic statements, the band are almost unrecognisable from album to album. 2004’s “Fabulous Muscles”, their most beloved work, is a mixture of soft ballads and ear drilling drums, while the fearless cry of their latest album is simultaneously their poppiest and gloomiest record to date.
Stewart thinks his stretched psychological state found reassurance in pop music. “I absolutely love dance music,” he says, “particularly the lyrical approach. Any dance music you hear, what’s the song about?”
Um, are they about sex?

“They’re about wretched heartbreak expressed heartlessly and in the most exacting terms! I don’t go to dance clubs that much now but I used to be in them a lot. I’m always struck by how desperate it seems. Dancing to it was almost a physical exorcism.”

I suggest that maybe there’s a sense of shame in being made to confront desperation and that perhaps it’s why some people find his band’s music difficult. Because despite being near the end one of the busiest years of his career, having toured the US, Europe (twice) and Asia, and released records as Xiu Xiu and with Former Ghosts (not to mention guest spots with Los Campesinos and on a Smiths cover record), the criticism of the band is more vocal than ever.

“People are fucking nasty to us!” he agrees. “This year in particular, I’ve done my best not to read at all because it makes me feel bad most of the time. I think people either realy like Xiu Xiu or really hate me as a person. People seem to think I’m an asshole”.

While he doesn’t want to go in to the specifics (“If someone wants to be a jerk to me they can think of their own fucking reason”) one of the most hateful incidences of critic-abuse was surrounding the band’s video for “Dear God, I Hate Myself”. In another kind of catharsis, band mate Angela Seo makes herself vomit for he length of the track as Jamie, partially hidden, scoffs chocolate by her side. From here, it just looks like an art project or comment on the gross-out videos that fill Youtube anyway, perhaps hinting at the hidden world of “Mia” websites. Jamie makes it clear that in the song there’s a tension between hopelessness, and the feeling of there being a saviour close by. But to others, it was seen as Stewart inflicting his own problems on his bandmate.

“I was very surprised by the number of people who thought I had somehow forced Angela to do it,” he says. “It was all her idea. She was, rightly, amazed by how thinly veiled the racist thoughts were! That because she’s an Asian woman she wouldn’t come up with or decide to do something so disgusting. As if because she’s an Asian woman someone would have to force her to do something awful. If it was a starry-eyed white hipster chick nobody would think that.”

He’s quite right. But that’s because Xiu Xiu have always alienated anyone overly concerned with cool, even if they’ve been known to write cheerful songs about celebrity bums. Xiu Xiu are quite happy being a dirty (but fascinating) secret, and one of the loudest bands that people don’t talk about. “I can understand why someone wouldn’t like the music,” he smiles, “but I’m a good guy.”

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