Xiu Xiu : " Ignore Grief"

Why do some relationships works, when in the dating phase you are stuck on one idea of what someone is and you are either adding to or taking away from that altar in your head to them. This is not much different that the relationship between artist and fans. Bands often  hook you in with one release that touches you and then from there every thing is measured against it. With these guys it's "Dead God I Hate Myself" but always solidified them as a band I was really into. Since that time, there have been albums that touch on what I love about them, yet who they are is degrading into noisy experimentation rather than emotionally drive songs of bi polar depravity. This album finds Angela and Jamie splitting the album in half when it comes to vocal duties. It opens with crashing industrial noise. Not really a song, but sounds being used to create art. The colors they use are dark enough to b e pleasing to my ears, but do not go anywhere.

Dave Kendrik from Sparks and Devo fame has joined the band. Kendrick is normally a drummer, so I am not sure what he is really doing as there are more moments of noise than music that requires a beat. When we get to the "Little Richard" song I am not sure what is going on. I have a feeling that for a great deal of this album the instruments were turned on before being tossed down the stairs as a boom mic captured it all. In their minds they are making industrial music and modern classical music. I am not sure who they are using as a point of reference for either/ Lyrically they claim to follow themes like a mother selling her child into prostitution, but the narrative is about as opaque as "Eraserhead "The jazz elements that begin to creep in work the better than anything else in play on this album. 

Not sure if "Border Factory' is a song or not, but it does make sense that they think this is classical as it is more atmospheric and less noise focused than the first half of the album. This became a very hard album to review, as it became more about sounds and less about songs. That is often the barometer I use to gauge quality. With that said this album is being rounded up to a 6, because of the dark mood it captures. If it was not for that I might be prone to think it was garbage.