How will you spend your Thanksgiving break?
Xiu Xiu
"Dear God, I Hate Myself"
4 stars
Jamie Stewart's music makes him sound like the most depressed person who has ever lived. And this realization has never come quite as quickly as it does on the debut single from Xiu Xiu's fifth album, "Dear God, I Hate Myself."
On the title track, Stewart's whisper is frightening, as if a storm of cackling synthetic textures were holding a pillow over his face. "And I will never feel happy / And I will never feel normal," he sings. The song's music video is, appropriately, a single shot of fellow band member Angela Seo vomiting into a toilet.
Xiu Xiu has never made music for skipping down the street on a summer day, and this album is no exception. Interestingly, the band's intensely layered and complex compositions are made up of pretty ordinary disco or dance elements. But Xiu Xiu has a knack for pushing these sounds to the breaking point and throwing them in a pit to fight it out.
The result is best exemplified on "Chocolate Makes You Happy," a mosh pit of shredded 8-tracks, synths driven to a thumping frenzy and, at the bridge, bullets of blaring noise shooting back and forth. The song's protagonist is a bulimia-gripped girl who uses chocolate as her binge food of choice. The music itself is morbidly celebratory.
As if to provide some kind of answer, Stewart put a black-and-white, vulnerable headshot of himself as the album cover. He's seen his fair share of suffering, specifically when his father and record producer committed suicide just as the band was breaking out. In his own way, he wants us to know he's felt pain and can understand yours.
The closing track, "Impossible Feeling," could be the group's most impressive yet. The track begins with one long, wailing string from a violin, accompanied by short flurries of drums fit for a funeral march. Soon though, the track aggresses as Stewart whispers, "Out of focus iris," and quietly announces the details of his suicide attempt.
In this moment, we hear the violin bow sawing across his wrists, a piano manically blaring out of tune, and the drums battering his head from above. All that remains afterward is that one lingering string; it wavers, then fades away. You can't help but imagine Stewart walking away from the soundboards, putting down his instruments and staring straight into your soul.
