5RC
Released: 09.12.06
Both musically and lyrically Xiu Xiu should bother you. Their albums are darker than the inside of the coffin you are buried alive in during your worst nightmare. They create a collage of sounds and visions communicated direct from purgatory with several flashes of hell thrown in for balance.
Musically they engage in moments of quiet simplicity as well as roaring complex orchestration, similarly narrating in both whispers and sonorous yelps. Thematically, The Air Force is a mash of bizarre sexual deviancy, human morality, and howling depression. Primary member and songwriter Jamie Stewart does all of this without swimming around much in understated or metaphorical conflict. Rather it is harsh and frighteningly heartfelt.
Opener “Buzz Saw” states this from the outset, landing like a three minute sucker punch to the stomach. Once you’ve regained your breath you realize how profoundly you believe Stewart when he sings “I’m not like that.” In fact, you will believe all of The Air Force because lies are not expressed with such absorption.
“Vultures Piano” stakes claims as another album highlight, containing a surprising dance hook along with firework snapping percussion. Stewart puts an exclamation point at the end of the track by quickly spelling out the song title, followed by a couple aggressive hoots and a sharp whistle.
Still, the album’s finest confession might come in the form of “The Pineapple vs. the Watermelon,” an apparent autobiographical account of Stewart’s experience and understanding of his father’s suicide. Over a subtle, stripped down tone of guitar and bass, Stewart explains that “Someone felt something pure / And told it all to you / That was why you killed yourself / To prove it wasn’t true.” Somehow Stewart seems to both soar and crash here, feeling liberated enough to discuss it but too distraught to accept it.
Many of the reasons Xiu Xiu succeed are precisely the reasons they can be criticized. It is obscenely earnest. The music seems to lose focus at times. It couldn’t possibly be any more morose. But that is Jamie Stewart’s style and song to song, these are his demons wrestling with our taste and puncturing our subconscious, leading to one very simple conclusion: The Air Force is incredible.
- Kent Thompson
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