To hear Xiu Xiu is to be shaken, disturbed, and shown something original. Jamie Stewart sings haunted and tortured, though always with a sense of humor somewhere below the poisoned blood. "La Foret" is his most harrowing and beautiful to date, waltzing between acoustic parts so intimate you can hear his shoe scooting on the studio floor as he inches closer to the mic, and pounding dark-wave thunderstorms where electronics go Mogwai loud and Jamie screams over the hissing, spitting deluge. It's the type of record that leaves you seasick. Give your heart to the darkness; the rewards are immense.
Xiu Xiu
La Foret
[5RC; 2005]
Rating: 7.9
Burdened by a strong personality and a difficult homelife, Jonathan Caouette turned to obsessive self-documentation as a way to distance himself from his problems. From age 11 onward, Caouette locked the camera's lens on himself and his inconceivably dysfunctional family, capturing every tragedy in their spectacular meltdown. Those years of navel-gazing eventually culminated in his meta-documentary Tarnation, a riveting record of one young man's attempts not just to survive, but to flourish under impossible circumstances. The music of Xiu Xiu's Jamie Stewart occupies an aesthetically similar space. Artists who intimately embrace their own struggles are commonly chided for being solipsistic, but Stewart, like Caouette, engages in a self-scrutiny so ruthless and unflinching that it surpasses mere melodrama and becomes magnetic, grotesque, even beautiful. Their work seems less a vehicle for vanity or narcissism than an instrument of basic survival.
Xiu Xiu's last album, Fabulous Muscles, found Stewart reaching the apex of his accomplishments to date. All the hallmarks of the earlier records-- the juxtaposition of cloying sentimentality with base brutality, sculpted cadences with nebulous noise, and husky whispers with tortured screams-- were wrangled into precise pop clockwork. Pitch-perfect blends of emotional exigency and musical accessibility like "I Luv the Valley OH!" broadened Xiu Xiu's audience beyond those willing to grit their teeth and wade through a morass of confrontational clangor. La Foret, however, backs off dramatically from the pop side of Fabulous Muscles to expand upon its quiet, murky dimension. Here, Stewart's vocals hang in hazy suspensions of wafting guitars, piercing chimes, subliminal drones, and ornately wrought percussion. "Clover" forgoes noisy protrusions in favor of tiptoeing guitar, xylophone, and small, sweeping whirs; "Mousey Toy" is a dirge of ghostly piano, rattling percussion, and a noisy midsection of atonal flourishes, martial rim shots, and gong-like crashes.
There are upbeat holdovers: "Muppet Face", after opening with cascading glockenspiel, blossoms into a lean, multilayered synth groove, a mechanism with many tiny moving parts interlocking complexly, while the excellent "Bog People" is a runaway engine of crisp guitars and synths, drum claps and ratcheting percussive undercarriage. Xiu Xiu's resonance with Joy Division's knotted, barren dread has been noted often, but the similarity to Conor Oberst is usually ignored. It's especially apparent on "Bog People": "There will always be a headless neck/ There will always be happiness," Stewart sings, tweaking the last syllable of happiness, and going on to push fervently against his vocal range in a way that will sound instantly familiar to Bright Eyes fans. "Pox", another clear standout, is a suicide glide through skittering drums, slithering guitars, and an urgent electronic pulse.
One of Xiu Xiu's greatest assets is singularity: You'd never mistake one of their songs for another band's. While some music carries on a heritage, Stewart's seems like a purely generative, spontaneous expression of a unique sensibility, and what's especially remarkable is how a record that seems so brash on the surface reveals its subtlety by increments. Over repeated listens, a dialogue emerges within Stewart's lyrical blend of the sweet and profane. La Foret is a record that mutters to itself in the dark: "I tried hard to be good to you," Stewart sings on "Clover", "I felt peace inside my head." And after what seems like an eternity on this content-loaded record-- we didn't even touch on one of the best songs, the beautifully deformed smooth-jazz of "Ale", with its measured, plosive foghorn tones and razor-sharp lyrical turns-- that call is answered on the ominously amorphous "Rose of Sharon (Grey Ghost)": "You tried so hard to be as sweet as you can for me/ But I don't see you for who you are."
-Brian Howe, July 15, 2005
Review by Heather Phares
As conceptual as Xiu Xiu's fusion of post-punk, gamelan, synth pop, folk, and noise might seem, the group's music never feels overly cerebral or detached. On the contrary, it's usually brimming over with often contradictory emotions: love, hate, sex, violence, fear, and humor cling together so tightly in Jamie Stewart's songs that they can't be separated. Harsh and beautiful words and sounds remain intertwined on La Foret, which ranks among Xiu Xiu's subtlest, and scariest, albums. Stewart and company trade the deceptively bouncy electronics of 2004's Fabulous Muscles for a more subdued but eclectic backdrop that includes vibraphone, autoharp, and harmonium as well as the more expected keyboards and guitars. The folk and classical elements explored on earlier work like Knife Play and Fag Patrol resurface, beginning on La Foret's opening track, "Clover." Delicate acoustic guitars, vibraphone, and double bass play an aching, hesitant melody, while Stewart intones, "Don't don't don't walk like my single hope/I can only say it so many times," mining the song's pauses for all the beauty and pain that they're worth. Later, "Ale"'s clarinets -- which make the song sound like a kissing cousin to Bjork's "Anchor Song" -- add to the air of barely restrained heartbreak and disgust. The scary-pretty synth pop of "Muppet Face" is the closest the album comes to the typical Xiu Xiu sound (if there is such a thing), and shows off Stewart's expressive beat programming. La Foret may be more delicate and less immediate than some of Xiu Xiu's other work (especially Fabulous Muscles), but at its best, it may have even more impact because of that. Though there aren't any songs quite as bluntly confrontational as "Support Our Troops Oh!," there are still plenty of unflinching moments, even if they're couched in imagery borrowed from childhood, nature, mythology, and fairytales. "Mousey Toy" compares a callously casual seduction to a cat's plaything, while "Pox" is filled with poetic insults ("This plastic coffin always in the shade of your sickening daughters and your idiotic hobbling wife/This is where I live/Community college is waiting for them") that sting even more because they take a while to unravel. Stewart also remains as political as ever: "Saturn" buries horrible threats under layers of industrial static and noise, and it's not hard to guess who the George mentioned in the song might be. As accomplished as it is, La Foret lags a little bit toward the end -- "Dangerous You Shouldn't Be Here" feels like a poem that shouldn't have been set to music, and "Yellow Raspberry"'s strident shouting works against its thoughtful, detailed lyrics. Even more than some of the group's other albums, La Foret seems guided by dream logic, flowing and crashing unexpectedly. And, like a dream, Xiu Xiu's music is unique, difficult to describe, and utterly compelling once you give yourself over to it.
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