Xiu Xiu
Ignore Grief
POLYVINYL
A scared voice mutters about the crucifixion as her cries are subsumed by the echoes of demonic voices in a doomy deconstruction of what should have been a song. “Is this a metal album?” you wonder before the second track, titled “666 Photos of Nothing,” kicks in. Nope, it’s Xiu Xiu. Wild-eyed organ grinding. Shrill loops that sound backward, even if they’re not. A saxophone blaring with little regard for precision, or even tuning. Pulsing orbs of light dimming under a sprawling pile of broken instruments. Ahh, Xiu Xiu. So good to meet you…again.
More than 20 years after abstraction aficionado Jamie Stewart formed the project, he’s fully transforming it from a band into a full experience. Ignore Grief finds him using time-lapse techniques to capture every millisecond of that transition, with longtime co-creator Angela Seo once again along for the ride. Also in tow is Sparks and Devo collaborator David Kendrick, which could explain why Ignore Grief is such an expertly and absurdly demented outing. Clearly still inspired by David Lynch, Xiu Xiu—who released Plays the Music of Twin Peaks in 2016—once again get carried away by conceptualism.
The results of Xiu Xiu’s experiment with Kendrick aren’t pretty—or are, depending on whether you look at the world through the same googly-eye glasses as they do. Ignore Grief is an adventure into the bowels of anarchic horror with Xiu Xiu coming out the other end in an even bigger mess than they were at the start. The eight-minute closer “For M” reads like a never-ending version of the most disturbing breakup letter you’ve ever received. As the song flickers away, candle-like, Stewart and Seo crawl out from the wreckage appearing barely able to breathe, scarred by the shards of their own ruination. Will Xiu Xiu survive? Stay tuned for a likely sequel of some sort.
