Ignore Grief
Since forming in 2002, Xiu Xiu has used extreme music to touch some of our most vulnerable and well-protected parts, whether concerning sexual trauma, childhood abuse, suicidal depression, or life lost. Even by their own tireless standards, *Ignore Grief* is a bleak album, stripping away the gothic quasi-pop that has occasionally provided a spoonful of sugar to leave a high-definition void whose clangs, whimpers, and screeches evoke a spectrum running from industrial techno (“Esquerita, Little Richard”) to opera (“Dracula Parrot, Moon Moth”). The paradox of such unrelenting darkness is that you leave feeling happy to be alive—a privilege that, according to band principals Jamie Stewart and Angela Seo, can’t be said about everyone who inspired it.
This is a record of halves. Angela Seo sings on half of the record. Jamie Stewart sings on half of the record. Half of the songs are experimental industrial. Half of the songs are experimental modern classical. Half of it is real. Half of it is imaginary. The real songs attempt to turn the worst life has offered to five people the band is connected with into some kind of desperate shape that does something, anything, other than grind and brutalize their hearts and memory within these stunningly horrendous experiences. The imaginary songs are an expansion and abstract exploration of the early rock and roll “Teen Tragedy” genre as jumping off point to decontaminate the band’s own overwhelming emotions in knowing and living with what has happened to these five people. What none of this record does and despite the oft repeated assertion, what Xiu Xiu has never done, is attempt to superficially shock the listener. Instead, Xiu Xiu has spent twenty years grappling with how to process, to be empathetic towards, to disobey and to reorganize horror; there is no other word for it other than horror. The motivation for writing Ignore Grief to be about a child who was sold into prostitution by his mother, a junior high student who was kidnapped and murdered, incessantly choosing alcohol and cocaine over one’s family, becoming lost in the bleakest, darkest aspects of cultish spirituality and committing suicide as means to escape and protest a life of violent sex work is because the members of Xiu Xiu themselves are deeply shocked. Old friend and new member David Kendrick (Sparks, Devo, Gleaming Spires) joins Angela Seo and Jamie Stewart through whatever this may be and whatever it may mean and why ever it may have occurred. The point of aesthetic examination is to see if there is any way to come out the other side or if there is even any reason. In either case there may not be but to simply turn away would be yet a further act of destruction. “I had now lost all confidence in myself, doubted all men immeasurably, and abandoned all hopes for the things of this world, all joy, all sympathy, eternally. This was the truly decisive incident of my life. I had been split through the forehead between the eyebrows, a wound that was to throb with pain whenever I came into contact with a human being.” -Osamu Dazai
Ignore Grief is at least admirable as an unabashed execution of Xiu Xiu's vision, shock, and pure artfulness by delivering the heavy in the most traumatizing manner.
When several people close to Xiu Xiu's Jamie Stewart and Angela Seo were victims of human trafficking, addiction, murder, and other horrors, the duo had to process its feelings through music.
No matter which shape Xiu Xiu’s music takes, their records always teeter on that infernal edge between troubling and travesty. The group’s new LP, Ignore Grief, keeps that trenchant ambiguity alive and then some.
Has it really been two years since Xiu Xiu released their last album? It feels just like yesterday that I was sitting down and playing 2021’s ‘OH NO’ for
‘Ignore Grief’ sees Xiu Xiu returning, or perhaps regressing, to the murky hellscape of their earlier work. Read our review.
Ignore Grief by Xiu Xiu album review by Stephan Boissonneault . The group's full-length is out today via Polyvinyl and DSPs
“This record is not fit for human consumption.” – BPM editor Rob Hakimian --- This review is torn in two. The cursive parts indulge in moments of darkness explored by Xiu Xiu's new album Ignore Grief. The non-cursive parts describe the record in objective terms. Please choose to read it however you feel comfortable indulging