8 years since their debut Knife Play, Xiu Xiu have, in consistent and workman like fashion, created a catalogue of songs that embody freedom as an explosion of passion in all it’s overwhelming and counter logical incarnations.  Long time listeners, and I realized this while listening to Dear God I Hate Myself,  have just come to expect that literally, from moment to moment, anything can happen in their music.  Sure, they have themes, obsessions, whatever you want to call them (radical empathy, electro acoustic freak outs, new gothic brooding, death and despair, total emotional nakedness, clicky rambling, chiming percussion, naming people in their songs, humor, and sound collages) but to my ears they’re never retreading this stuff, they’re just filing, refining, and exploding their work until they arrive at the next evolutionary step, whatever it might be. What I mean is, despite their consistency and development as musicians, each of their albums still sounds new, but actually so does each second of each song.

A line by line reading of their catalogue reveals a band that is particularly adept at importing whatever that thing is that makes them feel so vital  to suit a variety of circumstances, musical and otherwise.  One of the first indie bands for whom the question of their music being electronic or acoustic was just so beside the point, Xiu Xiu’s work ranges from totally acoustic strummed guitar ballads to up beat electronic pop.  They’ve created tracks that sound like musique concrete influenced new classical, as well as anthemic indie rock.  It’s seamless for them, but for most bands this type of breadth would just not work.  Their thing is, the thing that makes this work for them, is that they have this mood, this point of view that is so strong / stringent that no matter what they are playing they can’t help but sound like themselves.  I mean, you just know when you are hearing something by Xiu Xiu.  It’s all about Jamie Stewart (front man, mastermind, etc…).  Sure he brings in collaborators in a nearly compulsive fashion, but it’s his joie de vivre (and, er…mort as well)  that is the emotional and, one assumes, sonic center of Xiu Xiu,.  His musical output just has this ambience that veils most everything Xiu Xiu does.  It all falls on the south side of a nervous breakdown.  Despite the lyrics being pervy, angrily leftist, hurt, wounded and needy, Jamie Stewart just usually sounds like someone who is barely holding it together, in every sense of the word.

Most of the tracks on Dear God I Hate Myself lean toward the electronic end of the electronic-acoustic axis.  Famously, the album uses korg software for Nintendo DS for much of the programming and songwriting and there is a feeling throughout the album of time being locked in place, as if an invisible metronome marks time in a silent current running beneath the songs.  This is a change from their last two full lengths which really had this band in a room chemistry and sound. Coming midway through the album, Secret Motel - a vibrant, collage-like,electronic track - showcases this.  It reminds me of the soundtrack Tomandandy did for the film of The Rules of Attraction, it has this free wheeling explosive quality with multiple layers of blips and bleeps crashing into chord changes that anchor it with emotional resonance.  This Too Will Pass Away (For Freddy) managed to sound like retro 80s new wave pop whilst also sounding like club-lite laptop techno.  Chocolate Makes You Happy is a barn raising electro disco track (via DS) that really kinda sounds like a Pet Shop Boys song minus that British pop star misanthropy thing they have going on.