last week's jams:

email:
sanskrit at gmail dot com

Atom RSS feed

blogosphere:
NEW LINKS COMIN' SOON

Best Week Ever
Gizmodo
Brooklyn Vegan
You Ain't No Picasso
Music (For Robots)
videos.antville.org

Xiu Xiu - La Foret


On Jamie Stewart's fourth 5rc full-length as Xiu Xiu, things are a good bit less frantic and wildly excited as they were on last year's shocking Fabulous Muscles. That doesn't mean the album isn't intense. Just as any Xiu Xiu fan would expect, La Foret is an intimate record, and I don't mean "intimate" in the sense that No Doubt unplugged is intimate. No. Intimate as in Jamie alone in a room with a guitar repenting for his sins and you've got your ear pressed up to a glass against the wall, or at least, that's what the album's opener, "Clover," sounds like. Its like sitting at an open mic night and watching the guy up on stage get so into his song that he breaks into tears and it just affects everyone watching him. And as Jamie rests and the synth and strings swell and the xylophone gets hit harder and harder to build the tension, in the end it all comes down to Jamie's quietly admitting "I can only say it so many times."
Things grow more somber and gothic on beutiful songs like "Rose of Sharon (Grey Ghost Version)," but Xiu Xiu does do us a kindness by including at least one song to work as a transition between the more electronic, rythmic, and excited Fabulous Muscles and this in "Muppet Face." With balls, synths, and other staccato chimes sounding like an electronic rain on the roof, Jamie sets the stage for us, standing with some sort of confidence, be it feigned or sincere, as he confesses, "This shit clings like dander. This kiss scrapes like rust." before breaking into a delightfully oversaturated chorus which is followed by a completely and utterly surprising bridge of "do-do-do"s. There are waterfalls of unexpected noise and electronic snaps and discordant harmonies. The only thing that really separates "Muppet Face" from its Fabulous Muscles brethren is Jamie falling over screaming (as I always imagined he must do when singing "Crank Heart").

Clover MP3
Muppet Face MP3

BONUS MUSIC VIDEO:
Pox MOV (takes a few minutes to load)