I Do What I Want, When I Want

Jamie Stewart has been deprived of six Xiu Xiu members. Currently, two join him in his creation, Caralee McElroy and Ches Smith to form Xiu Xiu, and help to spin melancholy of the post-punk genre. Stewart is a relic weathered by losses, both professional and personal. And it is difficult to remember that a band’s members are integral to its survival; however, Jamie has proved himself a remarkable amputee.

“Women as Lovers,” the group’s sixth full-length disc, was released in this January, following a prolific output since their inception in 2000. The renowned “experimental” sound includes inklings of The Cure and Morrissey, though only slightly.

The music is dense with controlled noise, trumpets and new wave keyboard, some hodgepodge of states of mind that has been called “electro-gloom.”

The attempt to restrain yourself from dancing whilst feeling utterly grievous at Stewart’s ability to adequately convey words with song is an odd pull—extremities torn in each direction.

Like partying at the site of those bowing barns, joy ignoring the miserable. For example, on the CD “Fabulous Muscles,” the song Clowne Town is an electronic jaunt of robotic beeps and whistles, with a voice saying

Up and down through what you thought would be your future
Became the dark reminder of
What a rash and inconsistent faith you had
In loving your true self and your true love

Or perhaps the grim, voiced-over track “support our troops,” which is appropriately announced over scathing violin and microphone reverberation.

If a whisper is a voice without its chords, Xiu Xiu’s deemed “experiment” is not so odd. The music, sans order or traditional lyric tones, is an apt accompaniment to its whispered voice, the cracking sentence owing its dichotomous electro-pop.

In fact, if his voice was any more hopeful the music would be called Techno. Or post-punk-pop. And no one would argue that Robert Smith or Morrissey would have been better happier.

Instead, Stewart’s occasional distressed yelps and questions add something to the otherwise elated genre-truth, human emotion-which propels the band from any replica to authentic artistry.

Of a chemical collision of Polaroid pictures and general curiosity, a recent blog by Jamie concentrates the musings that would similarly describe the music: “Last night…I went to a Goth/dark wave night at a club called Skully’s. It made me feel like I had found a part of myself that I had forgotten. Goth was the beginning of playing music for me and regardless of the fact that I was wearing eternal tour fatigues of just jeans and a black inside…most everyone else was in full bat wing, bloody clown wig, sex fascist, electrical tape gear; I still felt some how a part of things, in that clearly everyone there did not like who they are and were trying so hard to be someone else.”

The new album is ripe with conflicts, between sound and voice, within the lyrics, and even between vocalists—Stewart’s cousin Caralee McElroy offers a tiny but powerful melody along with Stewart’s whispers.

If You Go

What: Xiu Xiu
Where: Aquarium
When: Sun., Sept. 7, 6:30 p.m. (all ages)
Info: 701.235.5913