Staples of a Modern Age

Interview with Jamie Stewart of Xiu Xiu 5/2/2012

Xiu Xiu plays the UW-Madison terrace with Dirty Beaches 5/18/2012

This is your first time playing in  Madison, correct?

No, we played there once in 2008.

So that was right after Woman as Lovers?

That was in the second half of the year, so it wasn’t really the tour for that record, it was just the tour during that year.

How do you feel about playing to college audiences? And a free show, at that?

It really depends on— and this is a broad, incredibly broad generalization, but it depends on the kind of school it is. I have found that if it’s a rich kid school, people tend to ignore what you’re doing and take it as just another entitlement that’s being handed out to them, and if it’s a school for working class kids, it’s just another regular show, and people are just into or not into it based on the music, just like any other show.

You know, I spoke to Gareth from Los Campesinos! a few months ago and he said the exact same thing.

[Laughs] That’s funny.

Your material is, you know subversive, to say the least— do younger people (ie the college crowd) tend to react better or worse to your music?

You know, it’s really broad. I think, because we’re a band that’s been around for ten years, we have some people who may have been 25 when they started listening, now they’re 35. But at the same time, because we’re doing music that’s part of whatever underground thing that tends to intially attract people who are younger, a lot of people seem to be interested in us tend to be high school kids, so the age range seems to be pretty broad.

I know you get this question a lot— but how much of the Xiu Xiu pathos is sensationalist, and how much is sincere? For the longest time I thought it was entirely honest, but then I heard that line in Gray Death, the ‘if you want me to be outrageous’ one and ever since then I’ve been wondering.

None of it’s exaggerated, it’s all totally honest. That line’s not really in reference to— I could see how it could be taken to reference to the, sort of, general schema of honesty in Xiu Xiu songs, but it was in reference to something completely outside of it. The one constant in the band will be that we’ll always write about things that are real. When we started the band we literally sat down and decided we were going to do that. So, no, none of the songs are made up.

You’ve been doing a lot of covers lately— Frankie Teardrop and Ceremony especially. And then there’s that absolutely fantastic cover of Under Pressure with Michael Gira (how cool was that?). Do you just occasionally feel a need to get out of your own head and your own feelings?

It’s not with every single one, but with most of them, it has to do with— almost invariably it’s a tribute to that song, a song that we really really love. It’s not an attempt to sort of remake the song in our own image, taht’s not our motivation for doing it, injecting our own history into it. It’s just kind of our way of saying thank you to the song.

And as for playing them live, lately, we recorded the Ceremony cover on one of our first EPs, so we’re just kind of playing a song on one of our records. We’ve only played it on one tour, so— the Frankie Teardrop one actually kind of came up spontaneously. We were on tour in Europe recently, at we were at this one horrible, horrible show, and we had been listening to the song in the van a lot, and we said, ‘fuck it, let’s try to do it’. The show was going over so bad anyways, the song would either go over well or be a total disaster. And the show was already a total disaster, and it was, again, one of my favorite songs of all time. It was just another attempt to pay tribute to that song. But we were kind of surprised we’ve stuck with it.

I really love that you guys seem to have such a wide breath of bands that influence you. What exactly have you been listening to, lately?

A lot of Krautrock— not really the main stuff, like Can and Amon, but the beat driven stuff, like Neu! and Harmonia and the Dusseldorf. Horton Feldman a lot, a lot of really late 50s early 60s experimental electronic stuff from Brazil, and, you know, top 40 stuff, and OMD.

Speaking of Always, Always just came out recently, and I don’t know how it’s been doing critically but a lot of my friends and people I’ve talked to say it’s the definitive Xiu Xiu album and really love it. So congratulations on that. Not really a question— just congratulations!

Thank you very much!

Your latest album, Always, has a few callback songs; Beauty Towne is a followup to Clown Towne and Black Drum Machine is a sequel to Black Keyboard. Is it a retrospective album, would you say?

It’s just coincidence, really. Beauty Towne is definitely a song about looking back to that time and the people who were involved and the song that Clown Towne was about, and kind of reconsidering where their lives are now. But Black Drum Machine and Black Keyboard are more, not really looking back, but really the second part to that song. They’re from two different people’s perspectives, and their experience with the same ordeal. One is definitely looking back, and one is more a part two. Not really, but— does that make sense?

Xiu Xiu’s music is really heavily based in misery and world-weariness— do you think there’ll ever be a time we’ll see a happier side to the band?

Well, it depends on the state of the world, I suppose.

So that’s probably a no?

[laughs] No, that’s probably a no.

So you’ve been touring with Dirty Beaches for a while now and swapping headlining dates with him— what’s it like playing with him? You recently put out a split with him for Record Store Day, too.

We’re coheadlining, yeah. We’re both headlining, but one person plays last, and one person plays before.

So what’s it like playing with him? He has a very unique approach to putting his music together— it’s just him, and he’s doing some very interesting stuff. What kind of drew you to him?

Well, tonight will actually be— well that’s not true, we actually played a festival together in the Czech Republic last year, but tonight’ll be the first night of the tour. But we have a lot of the same influences, and I think we both depend on music in a very similar. Also, he has an incredibly good haircut, and I have an incredibly good haircut.

So it’s like magnets— you two are drawn together because of the power of your haircuts?

Ahh, yes, in that completely polar opposite kind of way. Angela, who is driving the car right now, also would like me to point out the fact that he is Asian, and she is Asian [laughs] and she wants to completely overwhelm the underground music scene with the power of music superiority.

Awesome, I will definitely find some way to put that in the article.

Be sure to put it in yellow ink!

I know it’s a toughie, but is there any song in your catalog that you would really champion as your favorite?

I have a favorite, but I’m always— I will never say what it is, because I think it would make the other songs feel sad. They won’t, I don’t know— if I try to play the other songs, no sound will come out, like they’re on strike or something.

This has been bugging me for a long time, but what’s the story behind the over 18+ section of your website?

We had, on our blog, we always put a lot of pornographic images. It was during the time when we were on a label that didn’t seem to be paying any attention to what we were doing. Then when we changed over to a label that is paying attention to what we were doing, they were like ‘what are you doing! this is your official website! you can’t be doing this! you gotta take it down or you’ll go to jail, you gotta stop immediately!’ And, you know, our blog is like 10% about Xiu Xiu and like 90% about letting our id run completely wild, and we put up just kind of whatever we wanted to put up there. So I didn’t want to not have any, you know, sort of attachment to ridiculous explorations of anonymous voyeurism and exhibitionism, so we just sort of came up with the 18+ idea. And that way if someone comes to the site and they’re like 12 or whatever, they don’t immediately see like 8 guys fist-fucking somebody. They can opt out of seeing that, if they like. And it’s just sort of fascinating to see the things that people are willing to contribute. I’ve been very surprised that as many people have contributed as they have. In a way it’s totally wonderful that people are willing to do something so completely crazy.

The Hero Robert Ford

Robert Ford shot his best friend down;

Sniveling, his tongue between his sour fangs.

There was the red, that was the end

Of the world that Robert Ford knew so well.

—-

And then, for a minute, he was a god-

After all, it takes a god to kill God.

But then the dust settled and the smell

of iron and blood rotted through the air.

—-

And there was only Jesse James;

Who killed his very best friend.

Good Friday

We’re doing poems in Creative Writing now. It’s horrible

—Good Friday

I came around about 11 or so-

everyone was drunk, everyone was golden

I wandered about, back and forth, to and fro

the crowds of people, all faces frozen

into that mesh of sickly bliss

 —————————

I was as sober as I’d ever been;

fresh from Chicago with an eager home

waiting for me a mile away. I fend

as best I can, with people I have known

but that I don’t know anymore.

 —————————

It’s not my town anymore, though-

These are their friends, these are their drugs,

These are their lives, this is the home I used to know.

And, leaving sober, I think I’d like to go

back to them again, soon.

The Day the Sky Turned Red

Creative writing project; no prompt. It’s a story about growing up.

- - -

The Day the Sky Turned Red

            I hold the phone to my face, and a single bead of sweat traces down its plastic rim. I  talk; first slowly, then faster and faster as I gain confidence, like an engine warming up, like a man trying to piece himself back together.

            Hello son, I say.

            How are you? I ask.

            I miss you too, I reply.

            And then I sit there, not sure what to say next.

            I stare into the fireplace for a while, at the dancing flames, until the glow is all I can see anymore. Then, I part my cracked lips, and ask if I ever told him about the day the sky turned red.

            No? I didn’t?

            I smile a little, despite myself.

            Well, then;

- - -

            There was the one day that the sky turned red.

            It was in the middle of this great big storm in the middle of the day- clouds swilled in the skies and everything kind of crackled. There was energy in the air and you could feel it. Everything was kinetic; everything had potential.

            I was a lot younger back then. No, that doesn’t mean I’m old now, it just means- well, I was a kid then. The world was new. Or newer, at least. There was still some gloss to everything. There were still things that could surprise you, even in the middle of nowhere, where ‘everything’ is the same square mile of farm, ad infinum, till the horizon is just corn stalks and the future is too.

            I was too young to realize it then, but mine was a lifetime of a single day, on repeat forever. Over and over and over again.

            But not that day. That day, the sky turned red. And I saw her dancing.

            I went outside with my little camera and my little body and I stood under the glower of God. The clouds were creeping in and I could feel the rumble of something terrible off in the distance, but where I was there was perfect stillness. And straight above me was the sky, sleek and red. I thought it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

            My little legs wandered and pulled me with them, and before I knew it I was off the porch and into the fields.

            I took countless pictures, disregarding the polaroids as the camera spit them out into the wind. I was much more excited with the idea of being a photographer than the actual artistry of it, and my awkward half pictures of meadows and rumbling clouds and great elegant nothings were proof of that. But everything was beautiful, and everything deserved to be immortalized- and suddenly I was in the dark heart of nowhere with nothing but a polaroid bread crumb trail to lead me home.    

            I walked through the fields, slowly, carefully, watching the world through my camera lens. I’d never been out this far before; even when I stood on the tips of my toes I could barely see the farmhouse over the hump of the horizon. After a while I stopped worrying about how I was going to get home and focused my efforts purely on progressing deeper into the fields.

            As I walked farther and farther, the old world began to drop away and an entirely new one rose to replace it. The stalks of corn thinned and vanished, and the hum of trucks way off in the distance gave way to silence. And then trees began to appear; great, gnarled, leafless trees poking through the salted earth, with all of their crooked branches pointed heavenward to the shrinking red sky. They were the latest most beautiful thing I had ever seen, so I took pictures of them; thousands, millions of pictures, till the air was full of little polaroid snowflakes, till you couldn’t see anything at all- till I was suddenly out of pictures.

            I clicked the camera a few more times with increasing disheartenment, and then I let it hang, sterile, against my skinny chest. And then I turned to go- but when I wheeled around on my heels, I found myself face to face with a tree that hadn’t been there before. And, to my slight surprise, a man’s face stared back at me from a hollow in the tree. I tilted my head curiously, and the face rotated in quiet compliance. Then, with a slight clattering sound, it reached a branch out to me. I took it with enthusiasm and shook it, and the tree smiled in response. Then it reached up a spindly branch arm to its higher limbs and plucked the single apple hanging from it. The tree handed it over to me, and then patted a stump by its base. Dutifully, I sat down and began to eat.

            I watched the world off in the distance as the clouds began to roll in and overlap the glowing sky. The storm was reaching its climax- there was very little left of the world I used to know. The tree pointed off to the west, to the very corner of the world. I followed his direction, my little eyes wide in their sockets. And, with a rumble of thunder as fanfare, the denizens of the old world began to crawl up from their hovels in the heart of the earth. Great beasts, half bird, half-anything-else, flew from the crevices and the cracks in the ground, swirling about the sky like a giant sickly tornado, howling curses at everything that walked and everything that swam. And from the seas, even farther off in the distance, I saw the Golden People- huge men, hundreds of feet tall and made of glowing metal- emerge from the waves and march inland to the still untouched kingdoms of brass many thousands of miles away.

            And I saw her, there. Out on the cliff, by the stormy waves.

            The sky had narrowed to a single prick of red glow; a crimson column of light shone down on her, out on the little outcrop over the sea. Slowly, I stood up, the apple rolling from my hand, and I walked over to her. Once I glanced over my shoulder back to the tree, but it was lost amongst the forest. And then I turned back— there she was, not twenty feet away from me, on the edge of that cliff overlooking the sea, swimming in the shower of red. 

            She wasn’t perfect. I’ve told other people before that she was perfect, but that was when I was younger too.

            No, she wasn’t perfect- only as close as you could come.

            She was entirely naked. Probably the first real woman I’d ever seen- really seen, I mean. But I didn’t notice. I was too young to see things like that. Instead I saw the curve of her back, the twist of her arms, her legs like ribbons, looped and twisted into winding bows.

            She was twirling, dancing, her body arching like the lightening in the distance. The longer I stared the more difficult it became tell her from the storm; her body glowed with the flash of lightening and her steps were like raindrops, bouncing off the cliff- but with every step, I could feel the rumble of thunder, the energy and the wildness of a thing inhuman.

            I was transfixed. All I could do was breath, and hope that was enough.

            But suddenly she was still, her legs unbowed, arms limb by her side, her hair a halo, and her eyes staring straight through me.

            I couldn’t help myself; I started walking towards her, my curious little heart silent in my chest. And she started walking towards me too, her steps weaving in and out with grace unknown to man. And then we were inches apart, the warmth of her bare skin radiating against my little face.  

            And, not knowing what else to do, I reached out- and her hand reached out and touched mine, too. I felt the life in her- I felt the thunder, the sky, the glory, and it arced through me, like great tongues of fire. Our fingers intertwined, my little hand eclipsed by hers. I gasped, but the air wouldn’t come; I was breathless, and I was floating, and all of everything was falling out from underneath us.

            And then she leaned in and grabbed my other hand and suddenly we were a current. I felt the electricity pumping through my blood- through her blood, too. And then she pulled me close, my tiny body and my thudding chest to her breast, and she kissed me on the cheek.

            Everything was still for a moment. Lifetimes passed in that second, whole galaxies sprang from cosmic ash and burnt into nothing while our skin touched. I was a child; I didn’t know what it meant. But I could feel something in it it. This was the potential, fulfilled. This was motion. Static burning through my cheek and through my skin and through my heart, now beating a million million beats per second.

            And then she pulled away, and in that first moment I looked at her; the red sky had finally vanished, eaten up by the clouds, but her cheeks glowed crimson in its place. Her smile, then- I don’t know. I don’t know what it was, but it was beautiful.

            And then I looked down, and I realized we really had been floating. The cliff was miles below us, as was the stormy sea. The trees were straightening their limbs and resuming their death-in-life, the birds were funneling back into their pits and their caves, and the Golden People were marching back to their kingdom under the waves. The world was grinding back to a halt. And way off in the distance I could see the farmhouse, a little brown dot in a tide of gold. Up there, staring down at my tiny world, that was the first time I thought my home was beautiful. I began to cry, realizing how incredibly far away I was from everything I knew.

            She wrapped her arms around my tiny body, shaking with sobs and soaking wet. There was such warmth in her. She kissed me again on the crown of my head and I was suddenly dry, and my sniveling slowed, and then stopped. And then she let go of me, and I slowly sank back down to earth. She waved at me as I descended, and I hesitantly waved back. Then she turned around and began to scale an invisible staircase, back into the wall of clouds that loomed above us. In seconds she was gone, and I was back on the ground, my feet glued to the earth.  

            For a long time I stared up, hoping she would emerge from the clouds again and lift me into the sky once more. But she didn’t, and eventually the storm died and the clouds rescinded, and then there was only the night sky left. No door, no heavenly gateway to some secret world; just the sky, that infinite stretch of black I’d seen a million times before.

             After a while I turned and began the long walk home, following my little picture trail of increasingly ordinary things. And when I got home I crawled straight into bed and lay there all night, my eyes wide open. I thought maybe I’d never sleep again. I did, of course, but I didn’t know that back then. I was just a kid, after all.

            And, well, that’s that. That’s my story. You asked me about it a long time ago, do you remember? You were so excited when I told you the first girl I ever loved lived in the sky- and I always told you I would tell you the story when you were older. I guess I never did, though. And it happened so many years ago. Long enough that you forget the details and you fill in the holes with assumptions, and with half truths.

            It doesn’t really mean anything anymore, though.

            All it is anymore is a good story.

            That’s it.

—-

            I say these things, and then I conclude with a little sigh. There’s no reply- it’s just a message, and I don’t expect a call back. I hang up the phone and I set it back on its basin. Then I take off my glasses and lay them by the mantle, and I watch the rose of the fireplace bloom in the lenses. But it’s not a fireplace, not a real one; there’s a heater and glowing plastic logs in the hearth instead of actual flame, not that anyone can ever tell the difference. I see myself in the reflection of my glasses- my big grownup body, still awkward and ill-fitting, and my sagging face, more a mask than my real skin. I feel at my cheeks and rub at my tired eyes, and I sag deeper into my chair.

            And within minutes, I’m asleep.

—-

            Walking down the street the next day, I see her again. It’s just me and her; the street, the city, the whole world might as well have been dead aside from us.

            She’s wearing baggy sweatpants and a downy sweatshirt with faded words across the front; some college, or some band. At first I can’t believe it’s her; it’s been so many years. I feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up as she gets closer, though— that fire, that thunder, it’s still there, even under all that matted gray.

            I shout to her, and she looks at me. At first she’s confused— she doesn’t know me. But then I smile at her a certain way, and she smiles back the same. I walk to her slowly, scared that if I move too fast she’ll get spooked. She’s a fish in all this water- there’s nothing to stop her from swimming away straight up. Nothing except for me, I guess, because she walks to me too, until the two of us are face to face, inches away from each other.  

            I look into her eyes, those big golden eyes. There’s still lightning in them, dancing just under the surface. She’s soaked to the bone, so I drape my coat over her shoulders. She pulls it tight to her chest and she glows.

            We walk down the street to the nearest cafe, my arms wrapped around her slender frame. We sit down in the corner and order coffee, smiling little secret smiles at each other all the while.

            And then we talk.

            I tell her all about my life; my shambled life. My job, as a professional photographer, still more in love with the idea than with the practice; my nothing-wife, with her tan skin and her big white smile and my neighbor’s dick in her mouth; my son, my beautiful son, who never picks up his phone, no matter how many times I call. All the while my hand inches closer to hers on the table, till the tips of our fingers are touching and I can feel the lightning arcing through her skin.

            But enough about me, I say- what about you?

            And she just smiles and shrugs. I think of her in the clouds, dancing, twirling, her skin impossibly devoid of sweat. She twirls in between rips of thunder and around the frozen rain, and nothing blemishes her perfect skin. My bones begin to shake. I offer to take her picture, but she shakes her head (and pulls her hand away).

            We sit there for a while, and I say a few more things. But not much- I never had a lot of words, not really. Not that I would ever say out loud, anyways. Instead I just stare into her eyes, her little golden eyes, and I smile so much that my face starts to hurt. And she smiles back at me for a while, but then she turns her head and looks out the window, into the pouring rain. I follow her gaze, but she’s staring at nothing- just an empty street, the same one I’d walked down a million times. Maybe more.

            I slump a little in my seat, and I call for the check. Our young waiter stops by and passes me the bill, and then he notices her. He stares for a while, and then he stammers that she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. She smiles at him and nods, and brushes his arm with her fingers. The boy shudders, and then he turns and walks away with a cheek-splitting smile and a little spark in his eyes.

            I don’t say anything. I leave some bills on the table, and we get up to go.   

            As we walk out the cafe I realize that we’re going in different directions- me heading right, back to my tiny apartment just big enough to squish my life into, and her straight up, back up into the sky. I feel a little sick thinking about it.

            She tries to hand me back my coat but I wave my hand and tell her to keep it. I lean in to kiss her, but she turns her face away. She’s still smiling, and I see the red sky bloom again in her cheeks, but she shakes her head, once, twice- enough for me to understand.

            And something little inside of me- a cog, or a switch, or a latch, maybe- something little inside of me snaps. Everything hits at once, and I begin to sob. I don’t know why- it doesn’t make any sense, none at all. But the more I think about how little sense it makes the more my body shakes and shudders. I can’t help it, I can’t help it- I can’t help it.

            I look up into the rain, my disgusting tears mixing with the downpour. Now she’s looming over me, like she did back then, back when I was a kid. She’s beautiful; no, she’s perfect- tall, and slender, she’s wildness cut and carved into something resembling a person, something that I could understand. There’s something in her eyes, too- a glow, a fire. It’s potential; golden, burning, life-affirming potential. I sniffle and I stare up at her, wiping at my nose with the sleeve of my shirt. I don’t want her to see me like this. I’m so ashamed. I’m so repulsive.

            She’s still smiling, though. Always smiling. She pulls my coat off and she kneels down to me, draping it over my shoulders. It doesn’t fit quite right, but I hug it in tight, like a blanket. She doesn’t kiss me like back then but instead she brushes away my tears with the back of her hand. I feel the warmth, the pulse of life through her; the glory, the tongues of fire. Her touch dries me, and slows my tears. After another hiccup, my eyes are red and puffy, but that’s it.

            She looks me up and down, and, content, strokes my cheek once more and turns to go.

            But- but wait.

            This isn’t right.

            This isn’t right at all.

            I’ve stopped crying, but my chest still aches. My tiny little heart beats, and every time it beats it drives the nail just a little deeper. And she’s going, always going, down the street and then up and away, into the infinite sky.

            The red is back; there’s a fire in my heart, burning through me, turning me to ash. It blooms inside of me, catching my wooden ribs and my paper skin. This isn’t how it’s supposed to happen. Not like this.

            I think to the sky, to the thunder-swollen clouds, where she dances forever and ever, naked, sweatless, eternal. She spins and she spins, her arms weaving stories, weaving dreams. Dreams that children hold onto, that get burned into their cheeks, that they never really, really let go of. And over time the burn, the red, it spreads through the skin and into the heart, like a gremlin into an engine, like hope into a broken man. Spiderweb cracks. They grow, like plants through concrete, like splinters in the thinning ice, like lightening across the nighttime sky.

            And they spread, forever and ever, until there’s nothing left. Nothing but a scared child in a broken man’s body- a broken life that’s too big for him, out of tears, and out of potential.

            And there she is, climbing into the sky.

            She’s going, always going.

            To where? I wonder.

            To anywhere.

            Anywhere that isn’t here.

            I bite my lip, and in my voice so small and so childish even I can barely hear it, I whisper;

            “Please, don’t go.”

            But, of course, she does.                     

A Curious Space