XIU XIU – La Foret
(CD, Acuarela)
This record is hard to pin down as is the music and the
artist. From syncopated small-time synthie beats to bursts of harsh noise
and back to tinkering on toy pianos, Jamie Stewart takes you long ways and
sidepaths through his own tormented soul. Violent pulses about havoc and
misery are being followed by almost gentle eulogies about sodomy and the
like. The music, the lyrics and the vocals run through various stages of
elaborateness and effectiveness, from a level of teenage-hood with wild
and uncontrolled bangs and admittedly awkward straight forward poetry,
through the torments of adolescence and up to an almost professional and
distanced approach. This, of course, doesn’t happen in any kind of
order, as might be hinted at by the syntax, but is mixed into a blitzing
collage of short outbursts of psychotic reactions and structured pieces of
complex build. All to the effect of showing off Jamie Stewart’s aka Xiu Xiu’s
unimaginable high amount of suffering and pain inflicted on himself? All
through this record, there is the undertowing hint of something more going
on, but it never shows its head for real.
A lot of artists use music (or any other kind of art)
as a tool to explore or sanitize their own private hells. My favourite and
most beloved example at this point in time is Anthony and The Johnsons,
who tries to overcome his own personal hell of ragged and broken
emotionality by sensitivity and the outrageously beautiful emanation of
sorrow and sadness with pristine glimmers of hope. There is no way I could
ever turn off “River of Sorrow” midsong; impossible. With Depeche Mode
on the other hand the synthetic and orchestral arrangement of industrial
beats and cold urban keyboard soundscapes has gone from pop-superficiality
(“Master and Servants”) to the dark and wet hell the late Eighties and
early Nineties must have been for Dave and the boys to reworking of
learned schematas in stadium-“rock” arrangements, that we have today.
Jamie Stewart alias Xiu Xiu goes a different way, by breaking up all
expectations, the opposition of contrasting elements and by bombing the
listener with a mixture of most intimate sounds and sighs with harsh noise
and disturbing plink-plonk from various kinds of sound sources. Still,
there is an amount of ragged and twisted emotionality in his voice and an
almost avantgardistic approach to musical structures and instruments in
his music, that makes the associations with Anthony and The Johnsons and
Depeche Mode viable. Even if Depeche Mode have never been as brooding
gothicly dark as the beginning of “Saturn” is nor Anthony has over the
top enraged as Jamie Stewart during various songs’ climaxes on here
(Moreover, I am of the opinion, that if you should find it necessary to
compare one artist to another, you should either find ones that are truly
alike, or ones that are interestingly far away but still true.)
What will eventually draw you deeply into this record
is its intimacy, despite all the outburst of harsh noise and distortion.
Right from the beginning “Clover” with its soft touches of strummed
guitar, vibraphone and cello underneath the broken hushed singing voice,
it seems to be clear that “le foret” is mainly about the feeling of
loneliness. Remember that you can be extremely lonely in a crowd of
people, while I have never felt a tinge of loneliness when walking in the
woods or on a mountain top on my own.
Highlights of the record include the intriguingly
brooding, rather straight forward Joy Division-hommage “Pox” (another
tormented soul, Ian Curtis, if there ever was one) – funnily mirrored in
the rather more upeat “Bog People” that confronts a child’s choir
singing with unfunny and violent issues - and the avant-garde concept
thematic work of “Ale” with sparse woodworks and other sounds like a
20th century composer working out a child’s theatrical play.
Stewart keeps the level of variety and arrangements at high numbers, while
basically remaining within his own torturous idiosyncrasies. Which makes
me a little sorry for the man. Maybe Jamie Stewart should go out into the
fresh air some more.
