DT Probes… Xiu Xiu - an interview with Jamie Stewart
Xiu Xiu are Jamie Stewart, Angela Seo and Ches Smith from various locations around the United States. Their music is a Hadron Collider of influences, smashing together Gamelan percussion with dance beats and post-punk sentiment with almost anthemic choruses. Their latest long player Dear God I Hate Myself has just been released worldwide - yes it’s quite deliberately confrontational, but for all it’s emotional fragility and openness, it’s a record so intelligently informed by pop that it’s hard not to take real pleasure in listening to it’s songs, even with provocative names like the title track. The single Gray Death off the album speaks in exactly this tongue.
Xiu Xiu - as Jamie and Angela - are currently touring England then heading back to the US for a couple of months before heading East then back to Europe, check out the full dates below the interview. In April they’ll be joining Deerhoof for a one of super-special event: a performance of Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures at Donaufestival in Austria.
On his 2009 solo tour Jamie covered DT’s favourite Joy Division (/ New Order) song “Ceremony” with just some beats, a stylophone and a bird caller, oh and himself. Check out the below and see just how special the Austria gig will be.
DT caught up with Jamie at the Xiu Xiu gig on Wednesday 24th February, 2010 at the awesome Harley in Sheffield, UK. It was great talking to Jamie, he’s a lovely guy, who seemed to genuinely want to talk, which makes the intensity of the live show and how inolving Xiu Xiu’s sound is on record all the more special.
Anyhow…
Here’s DT’s interview with Xiu Xiu.
DT: I read that when you and Cory first started, you had a kind of five point manifesto. Does that still hold now or has it changed or developed at all?
JS: I sure it must have developed, I certainly haven’t abandoned it, but I don’t necessarily feel constrained by it either. I haven’t sat down and written another one [laughs]. But I think that the reason we wrote it is because the bands that we’d been in before I think didn’t have any sort of of clear idea about what we wanted them to be like and I think that’s what led to them unravelling. So I think it was in the hope of setting us off on a singular focused direction.
DT: I read in a recent interview about “Dear God…” that you weren’t writing to make it more accessible, but you’d been influenced by a lot of pop music. When you’re writing a song at what point does it stop being a pop melody and become and actual Xiu Xiu song?
JS: It really depends on the song. Sometimes if I’m really lucky that melody is just there right off the bat but more often than not it’s only at the very end and only because of pouring over every conceivable possibility until finding something that feels like it might be real and might work.
DT: Do you find that time is quite a big factor in it? I do music myself, but I also work so it makes it really tough to fit everything in.
JS: Actually it’s been interesting sort of what it’s…I was just discussing this with a friend of mine who’s a musician also, and I’m in the extraordinarily fortunate position of doing it for a living, but she has a day job and does music and has a kid as well, and you know if she’s got twenty extra minutes in the day she sits down and because she knows she has to do it at that second she’s able to pour a lot more of herself into it at that moment. When I did have a day job I found that that was the case also and now that I don’t have a day job it’s a totally different process I don’t think the end result is any better or worse than it was but it certainly seems to take a lot longer because I have a lot longer to do it. Like I said I don’t know if that’s good or bad but certainly in most instances the amount of time it takes to complete something now than when we first began, probably five times as much [laughs].
DT: Do you have any kind of advice for someone who’s desperate to do music full time?
JS: We just got really lucky, I think. We just completely by chance ended up on a halfway decent label. Probably the third record that we came out with…the first two records we had were sort of popular but not in particularly popular and third record we had was a lot more popular than that and it came out in maybe the last year that people were really still buying records, which was really lucky for us, because even though not a ton of people were coming to our shows, a lot of people were buying that record because people still bought records in 2004 when that came out.
DT: Fabulous Muscles right?
JS: Fabulous Muscles, yeah. So we kind of got in on the tail end of that you could get established in a small way by selling records, which you can’t really do anymore. We just sort of kept a small number of people that have maintained interest since then, and I think enough people come to shows at this point that we’re not going to have to work anymore. It was completely by chance; I think if that record had come out a year later it probably wouldn’t have worked out.
DT: Yeah, I read that tape labels are having quite a resurgence. People are printing 100 copies of a tape and 100 copies of a cd and the tapes selling out and the cd’s not selling at all.
JS: I’m noticing that on this tour we’re selling a lot of vinyl and almost no cds.
DT: You’ve spoken about how you play the same way live that you do on record. Live it’s quite emotionally intense to watch, what’s it like to record?
JS: It’s hard to play live. I don’t find one easier or harder than the other. Procedurally obviously it’s completely different [laughs] but it’s not like, I don’t know… I kind of wish… I don’t know what I’m trying to say [laughs]. They’re both hard! They both, at least for me, take a tremendous amount of effort.
DT: I’ve picked up in your music many many influences, but I’m particularly interested in the dance element. What is it about dance that you particularly like? Are there any particular labels you’re drawn to?
JS: Not really, mostly I’m just interested in club music; I don’t listen to club music unless I go out dancing. I think there’s something about… most dance music has extraordinarily unsophisticated but extraordinarily direct lyrics, that if you heard them in an art rock song they’d be almost too direct in that sort of setting. But I think in a dance setting because it’s in a public space, and because it’s something that’s physical, and depending how you’re nights going it can be social or not, it has an inherent emotionality to it because you’re in a space where almost the point of going to that space is some sort of physical release either by dancing or by hooking with somebody and getting fucked at the end of the night, you go to that space to hear that music and hoping for some physical end result. So that in combination with the incredibly direct lyrics that are almost invariably about pain and loss… the combination of those two things has really kept me going I guess [laughs] just as some place that I know I can go and kind of start my life over if things are getting really rotten. I’m really dependent on dance clubs in my adult laugh. I would never go when I was going up at all, but later on I would realize understand that they can really save your skin.
DT: Yeah I know what you mean, when you go on one of those nights it’s like a release.
JS: Yeah exactly. You can begin again.
DT: You’re playing through Unknown Pleasures with Deerhoof at Donaufestival…
JS: I’m actually wearing the Donaufestival shirt from 1985 right now [laughs].
DT: Very retro, very retro!
JS: [laughs]
DT: …what was it that particularly drew you to that record over Closer?
JS: Well there’s a romantic side to this and an unromantic side to this. The unromantic side is that the person who curates the festival, we played it in 2008, because every year they do a special show, and he asked us if in 2010 we wanted to do it. he said he’d give us a really big budget and we could do whatever we wanted. I asked him when he’d need to know what we wanted to do and he said the middle of 2009, so I had all these kind of ideas about what to do, but I didn’t hear from him, so I thought “ok, he changed his mind,” I didn’t want to come running after him or something. He got a hold of me at the very end of 2009 like in December or something, and was like “you want to do it?” and I was like “yeh,” but I was trying to think what would people be interested in and what would be possible to in a relatively short amount of time. This is a totally amazing record that changed my life and almost everyone else on earth totally loves this record; luckily it’s really simple to play, and if it could be in combination with any particular bands contextually it could maybe be a little more meaningful than just having whoever do a tribute band or something like that. So there is a functional reason for it.
Then the romantic side of it is you know, like I said, like everybody on earth… It’s the inception of a lot of current music that’s happening… I mean, I don’t have anything unobvious that hasn’t been said about their record before. It changed the game for the future of music, and that, along with a handful of other records, has been one that I’ve turned to again and again and again, just for an emotional need and for a creative need as well.
DT: As I said before, there’s a huge number of influences present in Xiu Xiu’s work. Have samples ever played a role in your sound? Live it’s very direct, have you used samples much?
JS: A tiny, tiny bit. I think there’s really only one or two songs that really rely on it and I can’t tell you what they are because we didn’t license the samples [laughs].
But they’re a small but of some relatively unknown pieces of music, and on occasion when Greg Saunier who had worked on the last three records with us he would use samples in a really kind of funny ways, like not in the way that you’d normally use samples. He would do something like put some totally unrelated music underneath to thicken the music in some way; like you wouldn’t hear it if you listened to it, but you would certainly realize if you had taken it out, or almost to be hilarious at times, like he would take drum hits from the most famous songs in the entire world or something, by the most gigantic classic rock bands and just put them into one place or something. He didn’t do it to be funny, it was only hilarious because it was like, we didn’t us The Rolling Stones, but like The Rolling Stones, something that dope-ily famous, just to change…flip a neuron switch for one second. He did it in ways I never would have thought that you could really use something, just because those were recorded in a different time, in a different way with a different person playing completely different equipment and a space that we don’t have any access to. It changed the environment of the record for just a moment that could make a passage seem interesting, more interesting, than if it wasn’t there.
DT: You mentioned equipment - when I spoke to Aria from railcars a few weeks ago he said you’re still using quite an old OS and everything. Is that form some particular ethos or…?
JS: It still works [laughs]! I know how to use it, and I’m really fast on it and I know what it’s limitations are and what it excels at. I mean I could buy something knew, but until that breaks, which will probably be very soon [laughs], I’ll probably keep on it.
DT: Which are the artists that are exciting you musically right now?
JS: You mean new ones?
DT: Well, any really. As an example Aria said Former Ghosts.
JS: Yeah they’re super great.
DT: You mean you’re super great [laughs]?
JS: I have almost nothing to do with that band so I can say that they’re super great. Freddy writes all of the songs, on only half the songs I clink along on tiny keyboard parts. I can say it’s great as I have almost nothing to do with it.
As far as currently playing bands I mostly just listen to my friends bands. Lately I’ve gotten completely transfixed by that label Sublime Frequencies. They have this [laughs], this deal where you buy every single record that they’ve put out for 120 bucks and they just send you all the tracks in mp3 on a dvd and he writes it down in a Sharpie on the dvd, but you know if you bought all the records it’d be like 800 dollars or something. So I have a lot of that to go through, I’m really, really obsessed with it. Then friends bands are really exciting to listen to, if you know the person you know where the music is coming from, it makes it that much more interesting, that much more special.
DT: If you had to chose a favorite children’s character who or what would it be and why?
JS: Oh jeez… [laughs] I taught pre-school for a long time so I have an intimate knowledge of many children’s characters! God, that’s surprisingly difficult.
I can’t think of anything cool to say [laughs]! I feel some kind of pressure to answer this well, it’s actually a very revealing question.
I keep wanting to say Satan or something like that. That’s what I keep coming back to. He’s just appealing…as a child a character I was influenced by, and terrified by and in a lot of ways controlled by, along with most people in the Western world. Then as I got called I was like “woah, I don’t have to believe in Satan” [laughs], even though Satan is completely fascinating and aesthetically really cool, like I want to use a lot more Satan imagery. I told my mom not to investigate anything we’ve worked on - on the rare occasion she does she’s always bothered and disturbed by it, and I have this long, aggravating talk with her and I know that if I got into Satan imagery that would just be too much, even though I’d tell her to stay away, so for the sake of my mom I’ll probably leave it there. I guess for his incredibly, fantastical powers, despite the fact that he doesn’t exist - that’s a pretty interesting character.
I’m sure my bandmate Angela would probably say SpongeBob, the opposite of Satan, or the familiar of Satan depending on your view of SpongeBob. My niece likes SpongeBob too. Angela knows the SpongeBob song in German.
DT: Would’ve fit perfectly in the set.
JS: [laughs]
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Here’s the full Xiu Xiu tour dates for 2010:
UK
feb 20 - Dublin, IE - Whelans
feb 21 - Glasgow, UK - NiceNSleazy
feb 22 - Edinburgh, UK - Electric Circus
feb 23 - Manchester, UK - Islington Mill
feb 24 - Sheffield, UK - The Harley
feb 25 - Cardiff, UK - Cardiff Arts Institute
feb 26 - London, UK - The Luminaire
feb 27 - Brighton, UK - Freebutt
feb 28 - Coventry, UK - Taylor John’s House
US
mar 05- Greensboro, NC - Guilford College
mar 06 - Atlanta, GA - Drunken Unicorn (w/ Noveller, Girl in a Coma)
mar 07 - Birmingham, AL - The Bottletree (w/ Noveller, Girl in a Coma)
mar 09 - Little Rock, AR - Sticky Fingerz Chicken Shack
mar 10 - Norman, OK - Opolis Productions (w/ Noveller, Girl in a Coma)
mar 11 - Dallas, TX - The Cavern (w/ Noveller, Girl in a Coma)
mar 12 - Houston, TX - The Studio at Warehouse Live (w/ Noveller)
mar 13 - Austin, TX - Red 7 (w/ Noveller)
mar 15 - Tempe, AZ @ Sail Inn
mar 16 - Tucson, AZ - Solar Culture (w/ Extra Life, Noveller)
mar 17 - San Diego, CA - The Casbah (w/ Tune-Yards, Noveller)
mar 18 - Los Angeles, CA - Echo (w/ Tune-Yards, Noveller)
mar 19 - Santa Cruz, CA - The Crepe Place (w/ Tune-Yards, Noveller)
mar 20 - San Francisco, CA - Bottom of the Hill (w/ Tune-Yards, Noveller)
mar 23 - Olympia, WA - Northern (w/ Tune-Yards)
mar 24 - Portland, OR - Holocene (w/ Tune-Yards)
mar 25 - Boise, ID - Neurolux (w/ Tune-Yards, Scout Niblett)
mar 26 - Salt Lake City, UT - Urban Lounge (w/ Tune-Yards, Talk Normal)
mar 27 - Denver, CO - Hi-Dive (w/ Tune-Yards, Talk Normal)
mar 29 - Lawrence, KS - Jackpot Saloon (w/ Tune-Yards, Talk Normal)
mar 30 - St. Louis, MO - Lemp Neighborhood Arts Center (w/ Tune-Yards, Talk Normal, Br’erl)
mar 31 - Iowa City, IA - The Picador (w/ Tune-Yards, Talk Normal)
apr 01 - Northfield, MN - The Cave at Carleton College (w/ Tune-Yards, Talk Normal)
apr 02 - Minneapolis, MN - 7th Street Entry (w/ Tune-Yards, Talk Normal)
apr 03 - Chicago, IL - Lincoln Hall (w/ Tune-Yards, Talk Normal, Zola Jesus)
apr 05 - Oberlin, OH - The Dionysus Discotheque (w/ Tune-Yards, Talk Normal)
apr 07 - Cleveland, OH - The Spot (w/ Tune-Yards, Talk Normal)
apr 08 - Buffalo, NY - Mohawk Place (w/ Tune-Yards)
apr 09 - New York, NY - Bowery Ballroom (w/ Tune-Yards, Zola Jesus)
apr 10 - Cambridge, MA - Middle East Downstairs (w/ Tune-Yards)
apr 13 - Philadelphia, PA - First Unitarian Church (w/ Tune-Yards)
apr 14 - Washington, DC - Rock and Roll Hotel (w/ Tune-Yards)
apr 15 - Chapel Hill, NC - Local 506 (w/ Tune-Yards)
apr 17 - Detroit, MI - Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (w/ TBD)
