Xiu Xiu - Forget

Tiny Mix Tapes 80

Xiu Xiu
Forget

[Polyvinyl; 2017]

Rating: 4/5

Faith, Torn Apart: A Parallel Poem

My room is a mess [I prefer “lived in”]
My hair is black and blue [I will be gray by 26]
My new phone is pink [My mantra: “Real men do not exist”]
My dress is a fishnet dress [I am not your catch]
My face looks soft [I have never been able to grow a beard]
My eye shadow is like Cleopatra [What good is a jewel that ain’t still precious?]
My contacts are bright green [My favorite color is coniferous]
My braces are real [My front tooth has started moving back]
My pose is for you [All other positions are incidental]
My freckles are for you [You can connect them with your fingers]
My shirt has no buttons [My outfit is an extension of my psyche]
My finger is in my mouth [I have never stopped biting my nails]
My hijab is polkadot [My patron saint is Saint Anthony]
My head is resting on my wrist [When I sit up again, my face is wrist-shaped]
My gaze is never going to settle [My indecisiveness is steadying]
My beauty mark is from a pen [My pencil case is a pretzel bag]
My wig fell off into a pillow [When I get restless, I sweep my bedroom floor with my hands]
My smirk is a shadow [I have stopped chasing it out windows]
My glasses have purple frames [My last pair was snapped in half by a basketball]
My village is 6,600 miles away [Distance is an illusion that I have trouble envisioning]
My arms are chubby [I eat more now that I know for sure that I’m not dying]
My nose smells horrible smells [Somebody in my apartment building was cooking green beans]
My kiss comes from a scream [Its only way out is through closed lips]
My heart is going to crack in half [I just don’t know when]
My gold tooth is knocked out [A month after I got my wisdom teeth removed, I got a jaw infection that was never medically explained]
My baseball cap hides the truth [I was never really into sports]
My name is romantic [By any other name, my temperature is always 97.9° Fahrenheit]
My thoughts are petunias [My actions are a dark green watering can]
My bra strap is a new feeling [My shoulders are perfect for cardigans]
My jaw is uneven and unassured [My teeth turn black and fall out in my dreams]
My posture is by demand [I slouch because when I stand up tall, I feel like a gorilla]
My skirt is thrown up over my head [In Delphi, I wore a green pashmina on my head, and nobody said anything about it]
My curls are fading fast [I haven’t gotten a haircut in six months]
My ambition is still, it is still to be a star [My cake-decorating career is still achievable]
My pajamas don’t fit very well [Every morning, I wake up strangled in a heap of bedsheets]
My knees hurt [There’s a railing in New Orleans that is chipped]
My little shirt matches my little shorts [Until last summer, I never wore shorts because I don’t like how my legs look]
My skin feels like a breaking vase [Its cracks, like raku, are by design]
My appearance will stress you out [My stress is that it’s not apparent]
My bikini looks dumb [I am terrified of being under water]
My shower is the least refreshing thing about it [I prefer morning baths, because I can cheat an extra 20 minutes of sleep]
My only recourse is there is no recourse [My panic became manageable when I realized I could still breathe]
My bindi has been rubbed to the side [My third eye is nearsighted]
My frown is for always [That’s just how my face looks]
My family will never see me again [My faith assures me that I will see them again someday]
My goofy jokes hide my goofy damnation [Chicago? I hardly knew her]
My ego’s excuse: “It just happened” [My blaming of others is inherited]
My tears and my drool are all the same [The blood from my nose and the blood from my mouth are both from my heart]
My fear is for one and all [My silence is violent]
My dead-end childhood is just beginning [My paleontology career is probably not achievable]
My niqab is like a rose [My thorns are invisible]
My motto is “Champagne for my real friends” [My fake friends get nothing]
My age is on a card and cannot be disputed [How old do you think I am?]
My nails will be broken [I will never stop biting my nails]
My pelvis will be broken [My machinery is nonrefundable]
My feather boa feels like the butcher shop [I was wearing an orange scarf when I decided to become a vegetarian]
My favorite band is “I don’t know” [I stopped being a vegetarian because I love chicken too much]
My complexion is flawless for hours [I woke up like this]
My awareness is the same as fainting [I am perpetually afraid of passing out]
My party is private [My personal space is invite-only]
My day has been endless [My worst fear is that I will have nothing to show for it]
My night cannot possibly go on [My night will go on, without regard and without repose]
It doesn’t matter what you think [Kneeling under faith, I pray that you find peace]
Do anything you’d like [In growing despair, I pray that you find confidence]
Because I was born dead [Hung noose of charm, loosen your grip]
And I was born to die [I won’t stop where you start]

Fri Feb 24 05:00:19 GMT 2017

Drowned In Sound 80

Despite being steadily prolific, Xiu Xiu’s inventiveness in rendering touching music from brutal sounds and subjects is showing no sign of drying up. Forget is the band’s thirteenth studio album and probably one of their most ‘pop’ to date, but Justin Bieber this ain’t. Jamie Stewart, Angela Seo and Shayna Dunkelman’s sound gets a revamp on the record, partly thanks to a number of prominent collaborators, including vogue ball commentator Enyce Smith, SWANS guitarist Kristof Hahn and drag legend Vaginal Davis, but Forget always sounds unmistakably like Xiu Xiu.

Forget opens with a sonic punch to the guts in the form of the aggressive, amphetamine-paced rapping of ‘The Call’ with its “CLAP BITCHES! CLAP!” refrain, interspersed with Jamie Stewart’s distinctive vocals evoking longing and nightmares (“If I call out your name in the night”). It’s an exhilarating gateway into the record.

First single ‘Wondering’ has an anthemic quality and a pop sensibility whilst still sounding like it’s been made with drills. There’s something beautiful in the wonky electro, distorted vocals and buzzsaw beats. ‘Hay Choco Bananas’ is part abrasive and twisted (“To bash through paradise/The skull that is your heart/The skull that eats ones heart” gives a flavour of the lyrical content), part dimly romantic. The sound of the chorus as Stewart croons about love and death is ultimately evocative of tenderness, no matter how messed up: “The dream of love to come/The dream of love to come/When you leave all life will end . . . When you leave all light will end”.

Despite the moments of shimmering sonic beauty, it’s safe to say the Xiu Xiu worldview is pretty bleak, a sensible response to the world as it stands of course, but also informed by Jamie Stewart’s personal depression, neurosis and self-loathing. ‘Queen of the Losers’ is classic Stewart self-hate: “Everyone loves you/The pain has just begun/And everyone hates you/The pain has just begun”. Forget closes with ‘Faith, Torn Apart’ and a genderqueer poem delivered beautifully, not by Jamie Stewart, but by Vaginal Davis. You sense however, as Davis concludes with, “I was born dead and I was born to die”, that those last unhappy words still belong to Stewart. Whilst many will relate to Stewart’s feelings of despair, there is perhaps a potential to grow weary of his therapy-via-music or consider his eternally bleak ruminations self-indulgent. I fully understand this line and it has to be said that despite probably being the band’s most accessible album, Forget is still rarely an easy listen. But Xiu Xiu are not who you go to if you want things done by halves or humorously. Also, arguably, the band get a pass on accusations of self-indulgence due to the experimental nature of their sound and the fact that this isn’t standard MOR indie-boy angst, but a sonically complicated rough diamond with an overtly queer sensibility.

Like many a Xiu Xiu album Forget could be likened to the best kind of S&M session: one that leaves you bruised but never feeling alone or uncared for. For all the coldness and brutality of Forget there are moments of beauty, validation and comfort, showing that these things can co-exist simultaneously: it’s like the way someone in great pain can make wonderful, affirming music, which is surely what Xiu Xiu are all about.

![104499](http://dis.resized.images.s3.amazonaws.com/540x310/104499.jpeg)

Thu Mar 02 09:15:25 GMT 2017

Pitchfork 64

Xiu Xiu has always been a polarizing act, though some observations about the band are commonly accepted. Jamie Stewart’s tremulous vocals can feel vulnerable and threatening at once. He likes concept albums. And he is a fan of lots of kinds of music—gamelan, noise, dance, folk, punk—which makes his arrangements wondrously varied. Xiu Xiu has managed the feat of combining hooks and cacophony without spoiling either ingredient. They can offer a good time under the art-rock tent.

They can also be exasperating. As a lyricist, Stewart’s penchant for disturbing themes has become predictable over the last 16 years. No matter how far afield Xiu Xiu travels sonically, the emotional landscape is fixed. That trend continues on their latest album’s opener, “The Call.” The song starts with rapid-fire, nearly rapped lines about a “bitch,” and closes with a coda that goes: “Clap bitches/Why why why bitch/Why why cunt why/...Clap bitches.” At a level of vocal texture, these lines don’t sound like they’re sung by Stewart. (Credits list Enyce Smith as a guest vocalist on the track.) But in conceptual terms, the words definitely sound like they come from the guy who once sang “I Luv Abortion.” The verses and choruses shed little contextual light, and the final effect of “The Call” is one of disorientation—a familiar Xiu Xiu tactic.

By now, a choice like this doesn’t seem all that risky, or even commendably ugly. When he crafts a line like this, is Stewart just ticking boxes on the Xiu Xiu style-bingo sheet? Only he knows for sure. But both the pleasures and discomforts of FORGET involve the way the album invites that question. The set consolidates several of the band’s strengths: The production is stellar, with plenty of room for noise-damage as well as melodies (which are numerous). Xiu Xiu has fielded a wide array of intriguing experimental records in the last couple years, but they haven’t turned in pop-adjacent songs this memorable since 2012’s Always.

On “Wondering,” group backing vocals and distortion squall create a chorus of wild power. The otherwise self-pitying “Get Up” launches an ascending arpeggio at its conclusion, and it’s catchy and startling. Even the songs that don’t register as strongly have winning quirks—as with the timorous breakdown that leads to a screaming climax on “Jenny GoGo.”

But as a collection, FORGET doesn’t cohere in the same way that their best recent projects have. Plays the Music of Twin Peaks allowed the band to show an interpretive wisdom regarding another artist’s aesthetic, while remaining identifiable as Xiu Xiu. A recent collaboration with the contemporary classical group Mantra Percussion showed that Stewart can compose long-form works just as well as some of his ambitious experimental peers, like Deerhoof’s Greg Saunier. (Saunier appears on “Petite,” and also co-produced FORGET, alongside John Congleton and band-member Angela Seo.) Those albums had a point of view, and made sustained stylistic arguments. But according to Stewart, the organizing conceit of FORGET has to do with the “duality of human frailty.” On the idea of forgetting, he says: “It is a rebirth in blanked out renewal but it also drowns and mutilates our attempt to hold on to what is dear.”

That’s all true enough (if a bit overwrought). But it’s also thin: a simple observation about a human trait having benefits and drawbacks. Nor is there much evidence of this concept operating inside the record itself. Stewart’s lines are filled with the expected references to “the rape of everything decent” and the like—but not much that’s direct regarding the problems of a solipsism, or a selective memory.

The guests all seem a bit stranded, too. On the album finale, “Faith, Torn Apart,” the carillon tones of New York minimalist legend Charlemagne Palestine sound grafted onto the mix. And while a closing soliloquy voiced by legendary drag artist Vaginal Davis is arresting, it doesn’t connect with anything that’s come before. (In interviews, Stewart has detailed the inspiration behind what Davis says, but its presentation on the album remains vague.) Individual moments shine throughout FORGET: a stunning chorus here, a stirring lick of pitched percussion there. But the album’s strangest attribute is the way it can lull you into a state of absentmindedness regarding those same charms.

Wed Mar 01 06:00:00 GMT 2017