:: Track Listing

1. God and Cancer
2. Bedridden and Dancing
3. Song For Donna Rupert
4. Happy New Year
5. High Fives For Jamie
6. Psalm 88
7. A Heart For Amy
8. Regrets
9. Parting Sea
10. X Classical Greg X
11. The Washington Explorers
12. Bones Bones Bones
13. Thank You Josh
14. A Louisiana Sunset
15. Rest

:: Record Review

This Song is a Mess and So Am I

Church Point, LA
(Mattress; 2004)

Rating: 16%


First, a brief history; Xiu Xiu made its name with inventive percussion that was influenced by everything from Javanese Gamelan (a kind of percussive orchestra), eighties synth pop, dance music, hip-hop and actual knives being clanged together (hence "Knife Play"). Over these solid and always changing beats go strings (guitar usually) or keyboards that are either wonderfully abrasive or fantastically melodic.

But as bizarre and abrasive and dynamic as the music is, it’s never the focus of a listen to Xiu Xiu. The focus of the band is, for reasons obvious to anyone who's heard a Xiu Xiu album, Jamie Stewart; on his group's records, he bares his soul either whispering delicately or shrieking maniacally. Not surprisingly, the way Stewart delivers his vocals to his audience is undeniably divisive; Xiu Xiu is one of those artists who most people will either love or hate on first listen and will probably never be swayed in their stance (for instance, the band's latest, Fabulous Muscles, could've easily received anywhere from a 20% to a 90% from our site, both with complete sincerity, depending on who had covered it).

Whatever your opinion on Xiu Mother Fuckin’ Xiu, their albums are littered with innovative approaches to pop songs and thus, my friends and I (who happen to agree that Knife Play (2002) and A Promise (2003) are amongst the best this millenium has offered us) have been wondering when the first heavily Xiu Xiu influenced bands would start popping up. Would they be good? Would they be god awful? Would they achieve more mainstream success than Jamie Stewart and co. by making the gamelan more poppy and the beats less catastrophic? Well, looky here. Along comes This Song Is A Mess But So Am I with their debut Church Point, LA. And it’s unbelievably awful.

This Song Is A Mess But So Am I is actually Freddy Rupert. Freddy likes Xiu Xiu quite a bit. He’s put out a split EP with Xiu Xiu; he tours with Xiu Xiu; and he imitates Xiu Xiu shamelessly. All the things that make Xiu Xiu so relevant and innovative are re-used by Freddy on this disc with a shocking lack of skill. He shamelessly lifts song structures and beats from the Xiu Xiu catalogue---well, when he bothers to think of a song structure at all, that is. Most shameless of all is his blatant attempt to rip off Jamie Stewart’s infamous vocal delivery and sometimes uncomfortably honest, confessional lyrics. The only problem with this is Freddy doesn’t have the chops or vocal range to pull it off convincingly, and his lyrics sound like a sad thirteen year old child who dresses in goth cliche and gets really mad because none of the other kids at his junior high understand his "pain."

Apparently, this wretched album is the result of the losing ordeal Freddy’s mother went through with cancer. Now, I definitely understand how hard, scary and awful it is to lose a loved one to a terminal illness, but this is not the way to pay tribute to them. Freddy hasn’t sorted his feelings on the matter, or else he’s one of the least mature people ever to record an album because his why of “dealing” with the pain is to repeatedly scream out: “Why God, WHY?!?!?!"---which he does several times in between his shameless ripping of Xiu Xiu and New Order beats. Worst of all, he even actually uses pictures of his mother throughout the liner notes, and indeed on the cover of the album (which you can unfortunately see above). He’s not making songs, he’s making a bullshit diary of how hard it is to be him. And, outside of that, there’s absolutely nothing here. Nothing.

The most perplexing thing about This Song Is A Mess… is that Jamie Stewart seems to be encouraging this poor child. As I’ve said, they’ve put out a split EP together and tour together, and it honestly makes no sense. The difference between the two bands is stark; Xiu Xiu is experienced in transforming traumatic experiences into moving, sometimes equally traumatic songs, while TSIAM is a junior high student drawing black hearts in his diary and thinking about how much he hates everyone because they’ll never feel his loss. I can only imagine that this kid wrote repeated letters to Jamie and sent him home demos and Jamie, feeling sorry for the kid, is letting him tag along as a charity. But Jamie, when a dog is foaming at the mouth like this, you have to take him out back and put him down, old Yeller-style. The danger here is letting this kid think he’s creating songs, when he clearly should be working through his own issues. Sean Ford :: 11 August 2004 |