by Devin Birse (@devvvvi.b)
A quote by Blixa Bargled adorns the opening of Eugene S. Robinson’s bio for Xiu Xiu’s new album, “I did not join a rock and roll band to play rock and roll!”. It seems to summarize the contradictions inherent to Xiu Xiu’s music. The band has always toed the line between pop and experimentalism. On their first record Knife Play a sticker was placed over the cover that read “When my mom died I listened to Henry Cowell, Joy Division, Detroit techno, the Smiths, Takemitsu, Sabbath, Gamelan, Black Angels, and Cecil Taylor,” the artists listed contrast each other in genre and instrumentation but align in mood and experimentation. The list primed the listener for the soundscapes Jamie Stewart and Co. would conjure. At the same time, its opening line foreshadowed the bleak fictional confessionalism (Stewart’s mother hadn’t actually died), that would cause the band’s music to toe the line between pop and punishment. The statement that comes with 13" Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto With Bison Horn Grips is simultaneously more direct and more ambiguous. This is a rock and roll record designed by people who do not want to make a rock and roll record.
In an interview with the Quietus, Stewart described how the record was birthed from attempts to make a psychedelic rock record at the suggestion of the band percussionist/drummer David Kendrick, only to realize what they’d made was frighteningly close to traditional rock and roll. Stewart says that the record that came out of that realization is an attempt to “make a psychedelic rock record, and then do everything we could to nothing to do with psychedelic rock whatsoever.” Despite that contradiction-laden description, 13" Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto With Bison Horn Grips can be summarized quite simply as a psychedelic rock record from the minds of Jamie Stewart, Angela Seo, and David Kendrick. While albums such as Forget or Fabulous Muscles offered a glimpse into an alternate vision of pop where the writings of Dennis Cooper held as much importance as the croon of Roy Orbison, this record provides a vision of rock music that has been dissected and reconstructed by three experienced experimentalists. Despite its contradictions, it lacks awkwardness or pretension, rather it’s one of the band's most accessible and maximalist works to date. A genuine symphony of guitars, synths, and drums that scorch the listener's ears with the same mix of horror and beauty as a forest fire spreading across the skyline.
This shift in style doesn’t mean Xiu Xiu has diluted their sound though. The mix of synthesizer shrieks, spoken word mumbles that turn into screams, and ever-inventive percussion is still here, it just appears in new forms. On tracks like “Maestro One Chord” and “Sleep Blvd.” Xiu Xiu’s normally oppressive rhythm section takes on a new groove, the combined drums, synths, and guitar resembling the post-industrial grooves of Massive Attack’s Mezzanine. Elsewhere on “Veneficium” the band's synth and guitar attacks split off into mathy arpeggios and call-and-response duels, with Stewart's voice taking on an almost percussive quality as it ricochets off the track, flourishing instrumentation before sinking into psychedelic heaviness. It's the most band like Xiu Xiu has sounded since their debut.
A lot of this can be attributed to David Kendrick’s drum work, which frees up percussion duties enough for Stewart and long-time collaborator Angela Seo to sink their teeth into their guitar and synth roles respectively. Yet Kendrick’s superb drum work should not be understated. While his appearance on last year's Ignore Grief added an extra oomph to that album's death industrial lament, it was easy to lose his contributions within the mix of obliterating noise. Here though he shines thanks to the album's new tone and John Congleton’s exquisite production giving his kit extra room to breathe. Kendrick adds a momentum and urgency that feels new to Xiu Xiu, such as in the final minute of “Pale Flower” where his drums bounce off Seo’s synthesizers to create climactic bursts that puncture through the track's tense atmosphere.
Despite this newfound dynamism, Stewart remains the focal point at which Xiu Xiu’s music orients itself. Across these tracks, their guitar work leads the march whether that be the glittery psychedelia of lead single “Common Loon” or the manic soloing of “T.D.F.T.W.” Whereas on previous albums their guitar playing had often been either atmospheric or melancholic, here it functions as a bright shimmering centerpiece. The previously mentioned use of high-speed arpeggios lends it an almost prog-like quality while the mountain of effects slides it closer to shoegaze. This concoction creates a sound that resembles the album cover, as angular as stilettos and as bright as glitter.
In contrast, Stewart’s voice retains a classic mix of Robert Smith-esque fragility and Walker-like doom that can leap into mania at a moment’s notice. It’s what we’ve come to expect from their oeuvre but the way it interacts with the instrumentation feels decidedly uncanny. It appears almost as a ghost in the machine, so earnest, tender, and cutting that it prevents the listener from fully trusting the new sound's comfort out of fear that at any moment it could snap into full mania. It allows the record to play the same balancing act between pain and pleasure that Xiu Xiu has been playing since its inception. Across their discography, there’s a core tension between an urge to create the sort of gloomy glimmering romantic pop music that Stewart adores and the emergence of moments of deep-seated pain and trauma that appear as screeching noisy sonic onslaughts. This divide is clearest in the band’s cycle of alternating between “pop” albums like 2017’s Forget and “experimental” albums like 2019’s Girl With a Basket of Fruit, however, 13’’ Stilettos feels like it doesn’t fully fit into either category. Rather its new pristine rock sheen causes the sudden switches into classic Xiu Xiu noise and terror such as the nightmarish duets on “T.D.F.T.W.,” or the flagellating industrial bridge on “Bobby Bland” to gain a fresh sense of uncanniness despite these moments being such a key part of the band’s unique sound.
Even lyrically this album appears to be a unique prospect within the band's catalogue, with Stewart’s lines appearing more off-kilter than ever. Lines like the unfinished mantra of “But tonight could be” on “Pale Flower” or the assurance '“that a mother and father do not have to be a biological disaster” on “Bobby Bland,” gain a sermon-like quality through Stewart’s commandingly dramatic delivery. His mixture of these messages and the gravitas of the music creates a preacher-like quality to his words reminiscent of the swaggering grandiosity of gospel-era Nick Cave but with murkier sentiment. When the lyrics form into a more familiar image, they’re often soul crushing. On opener “Arp Omni Chord,” Stewart repeats in a hushed whisper “I have done nothing right my entire adult life” over a painfully gorgeous ambient instrumental, while on closer “Piña, Coconut & Cherry” they screech out “You can’t refuse love like this / It’s criminal / You must love me, love me, love me” across a bed of crushing darkwave grandeur. It’s classic Xiu Xiu fair, the desire for love and its impossibilities to be truly reciprocated, but the way the instrumentation opens the lyrics up causes them to appear crushing. Even when playing to form the band is sharper than ever. Stewart’s lyrics appear so cutting that they threaten to leave the listener bleeding.
Despite the brilliance of these tracks, 13” Stilettos is an album made significant in how it differs from what the band has done before. It brims with tension across its duels between accessibility and maximalism and in its mix of soaring guitars and industrial obliteration. The whole album is torn between that core Bargeld tension of being in a rock and roll band but by no means wanting to play rock and roll. It’s a gloriously complex and decadent yet digestible slab made by Xiu Xiu doing what they do best, taking a familiar sonic palette and distorting it through Jamie Stewart's distinct lens. Only this time the experiment has led to an exceptionally brilliant album. It's proof that despite over twenty years of noise-making Xiu Xiu are still as phenomenally tender and twisted as when they started.