Words to live by

>> Bay Area band Xiu Xiu are dead serious

IRONY IN THE FIRE: Jamie Stewart (L) and Xiu Xiu

by LORRAINE CARPENTER

“That makes me want to fucking throw up,” says Jamie Stewart. The subject: irony. “I actually really really really really really hate that about a lot of bands right now. I mean, why be in a fucking band if you just want to wear your fucking sunglasses and not say what you actually mean?”

Stewart certainly can’t be accused of veiling his emotions or abiding by musical conventions with his band Xiu Xiu, currently featuring his cousin Carelee McElroy on keys and backing vocals, drummer Ches Smith and bassist Devin Hoff.

Released in late January, Xiu Xiu’s sixth album is Women As Lovers, named after a bleak novel by Austrian Nobel Prize winner Elfriede Jelinek—for this, the NME has deemed it pretentious, an adjective often volleyed Stewart’s way. Another recent review dropped the descriptors earnest and moving, scary and oppressive, the latter likely in reaction to the band’s cacophonic eruptions and mechanical meltdowns.

It can be easy to overlook Xiu Xiu’s subtleties. Stewart’s stark poetry deals with such subjects as personal grief, political despair, dancing and incest, matched by music built with myriad instruments and divergent tones, echoing styles as diverse as micro-electro, chamber pop and noise. Their versatility has amassed a devoted following, as has Stewart’s self-flagellating confessionals, lacerating attacks and tender reminiscences, verse informed as much by his own life as it is by literature, film and the only lyricists he really respects (they’re both from Manchester, take a wild guess).

Mirror: You seem to reveal so much in your lyrics, but to what degree do you keep aspects of your personality hidden?

Jamie Stewart: Well, I like eating cereal, but why would anyone care? It’s not important to me that people know me as a person, it’s important that we make music about something real, and hopefully someone can relate to it in a way that’s more genuine because they know it’s real. That’s probably the biggest inspiration for our band doing all this in the first place.

M: What do you get out of depressing lyrics? Is it catharsis or wallowing?

JS: Yes and yes—wallowing can be cathartic. Sometimes you have to excessively feel what you’re feeling in order to understand it and get through it.

M: You’ve said that songwriting is therapeutic.

JS: Well, it’s necessary, I don’t know if it’s therapeutic. “Therapy” suggests that once you do it, you feel better, and I don’t feel better but I feel like I can deal with life, I can not go out of my mind. It’s self-preservation.

M: What would you do without that outlet?

JS: I would probably drink too much and shoot myself in the head.

M: Mmm. So I understand you’re in a happy relationship right now.

JS: Yeah, it rules.

M: So I gather you’re able to draw inspiration from positive emotions too.

JS: Oh yeah. The point is not to be bleak, it’s to write about what’s happening, and luckily something cool is happening. It’s not as if it has stopped all despair on Earth, but I don’t feel crushingly lonely all the time, which is totally great. But I can’t imagine [the next record] being really jolly ’cause a bunch of other really crappy stuff has happened (laughs). Bad things that cannot go unnoted, and good things as well.

With Thao Nguyen & the Get Down Stay
Down and Mixylodian at la Sala Rossa
on Wednesday, March 19, 9 p.m., $15