April 18, 2010
I drove to Mocad tonight to go see Xiu Xiu live. The word is that they are better live, so I went.
What I did not realize was that there was an opening band, and that Xiu Xiu had been paid to play Cranbrook's graduate art exhibition. In retrospect, I should have expected it; but nope.
I park in the lot, and walk inside. It is crawling with people. I look around. I see a dude with a peach-fuzz child-molester mustache, a sidechop haircut, thick glasses, Mr. Rogers sweater, corduroy jacket, skinny jeans, high-tops and a shoulder bag. Uh oh.
I have never had a worse preshow experience or been around so many lameass, pasty white motherfuckers who needed to bleed to death slowly. They almost all looked like they'd either been taken straight from the American Apparel catalog, the "Look at this fucking hipster" blog, or had just been constructed out of a cookie-cutter assemblage of artiste stereotypes, dressed like they'd been out on a five-day binge in a Berlin disco in 1990. To be vapid and revel in it was to flourish in these surroundings. They were a collective advertisement for birth control and the banning of cocaine. These shitbags defined the phrase "lost in art" and should have been blowjobs instead of people. Oh, the hate was intense. Rarely have I had so many hackles raised at once. I looked at them all socialize vacantly amongst the godawful art and occasionally sneak me a disdainful look, and felt the hate rise and rise. A nice pure wave of unutterable loathing. It was kind of a pleasurable sensation. To an exhibit, the art was all absolute bullshit - completely and totally disappeared-up-your-own-ass conceptually impotent dreck that would have been better off sprucing up a scrap pile somewhere. You name it, they had it - trying to art up advertising slogans and utterly failing, impenetrable statements about James Bond films, someone's truly dumbassed "Dollymentary" which attempted to examine gender identity/Dolly Parton and flopped like the average Michael Bay movie. Fuck not "getting" it - I got it all and still thought it was a total puddle of fuck. I began to yearn for a gas can and a matchbook.
I eventually found a few fellow record nerds who'd also come for Xiu Xiu and could talk to them well enough, but it was trying for a while there. About the only good thing besides that was getting served beer instead of Coke. It wasn't great beer but at least it was beer.
The opening band played. They were called Glass Rock, which should tell you everything you need to know about them, but I'll describe them anyway. Chick singer who was dressed like a librarian (a hip librarian! Tee hee hee! *retch*), had nothing that could be considered a personality or an interesting voice and strummed inaudible acoustic guitar through an AC30. Guitarist who loved him his reverb and delay and hookless lead lines. Bassist and drummer who were slow, competently anonymous and played every song at the exact same tempo. I'm amazed that they managed to remain awake to play their enervated, innately unmemorable and truly shitty songs. If I had to describe this blurry, unbelievably boring music with a genre name, it would be "comagaze." Or "snorecore." They sucked more dick than a Republican congressman. And, of course, hipsters and artistes alike stood solemnly in place and nodded along, digging the moozic...just digging it...nodding along...oooh yeah...
Finally Xiu Xiu came out and started setting up. The band was surprising from the start - I thought Ches Smith would show up on drums, but no... Two people came out instead. Jamie Stewart and Angela Seo were doing this show on their own. They came out and started setting up their gear. Assemblages of random percussion? Check. Little noisemakers? Check. Drum machine? Check. One synthesizer? Check. One Nintendo DS? Check. One guitar? Check. A plethora of effects pedals? Check. Two amplifiers/a few cabinets? Check. Tiny sequencers? Check.
That's it?
Yeah. That was all they needed.
I have only recently come to like most of Xiu Xiu's records (and still dislike a few), but that concert was proof that Xiu Xiu are, conservatively, about 500 times better live than they are on record. All the songs made sense, and even the one that was just tuneless noisemaking (I blank on the title) was actually interesting tuneless noisemaking. The intensity level was ratcheted about 5 times past the albums. Stewart's more out-there vocal mannerisms worked for the most part, and if they didn't they were mostly drowned out by the pounding drum machine and the synth. Angela Seo is a really good keyboardist and fills the Caralee McElroy role about as well as Caralee McElroy did, even if she isn't quite the multi-instrumentalist Caralee was, which basically only means Angela Seo doesn't play flute. (Side note: She is really short. But ferocious. Or fierce, if I was Christian Siriano or Beyonce Knowles, which I am most certainly not.) Most importantly, it was very loud and had way more guts than you would expect from a band consisting of two people that played a bunch of avant-garde distorted synth-pop. The set list was mostly focused on Dear God, I Hate Myself and the earlier songs were often really revamped. "Apistat Commander" opened, was stripped down and sounded like a distorted synth-pop classic. "Grey Death" and "Dear God I Hate Myself" were ear-splittingly loud and sounded like real rock songs - distorted rhythm guitar, no less. "I Love The Valley Oh" was guitarless and entirely synth-driven and surprisingly sounded totally punk rock - it was ear-splittingly loud and Stewart had to practically howl over the music to be heard. "Chocolate Makes You Happy" was another synth-pop song that did not sound cheesy (probably because of how loud it was - nothing dinky about it at all), and "Boy Soprano" blew the roof off - Jamie has a guitar pedal that sounds like a theremin. Screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
Then they didn't do an encore. Bummer. Still, they did play for about an hour, and other people who'd seen them before said this was, easily, the best they'd ever seen them. So, better superattenuated and superconcentrated than long and unfocused. I suspect they just didn't have enough electronic memory in their little electronic devices to do more than an hour. I met Jamie Stewart as he was taking the equipment apart, thanked him for the interview he gave for my senior thesis, and gave him a burned CD as a thank you for basically doing his part to help me graduate from college. He gave me a hug. Aw. Thanks, Mr. Stewart, I hope I didn't alienate you. (Nerves. God knows why.) Angela Seo was also very sweet, as were the few record nerds I managed to socialize with. (Me: "I don't know...I guess I started talking to you because you seemed - " Record Nerd: "Sane?" Me: "Yeah! Yeah that's it.")
Preshow = SHIT.
Opener = SHIT.
Headliner = AWESOME.
(Note: Originally published elsewhere online.)
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