Knife’s Edge: In Conversation with Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart

The term ‘experimental’ is an overloaded one in the modern creative landscape. One where streaming platforms and social media ‘campaigns’ have become the new normal. Both aspects, alien at the time when the Jamie Stewart-led Xiu Xiu began provoking thought in 2002. Since then, for any alternative music lifer, Xiu Xiu has been a presence.

From the first note of Don Diasco, the opening track from their excellent debut release, Knife Play, Xiu Xiu went against the grain, completely different to anything in vogue at the time. Wonky synths, guardrail-scraping guitars and Stewart producing the kind of unhinged vocal performance akin to Scott Walker fronting a punk band.

The excellent A Promise (2003) and Fabulous Muscles (2004) followed, confirming that Xiu Xiu were the pioneers for esoteric expression of the ’00s era. Exponents of a borderless form of outlier punk, untethered from any style or scene with structure and tradition completely ignored. The canvass, blank to write their own history.

And over the course of the last 22 years, they have. Stewart, later joined by multi-instrumentalist Angela Seo in 2009, have oscillated between obscure sound worlds whilst also creating their own. From Dear God, I Hate Myself (2010) and Always (2012) to Ignore Grief (2023), they have existed primarily to unlock the gates that lead to new possibilities.

This continues on their thrilling new album, 13″ Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto with Bison Horn Grips (take that, Fiona Apple). This is Xiu Xiu coursing through the mainlines. An extravagant collection of emotional vistas that are among the band’s most accessible works.

Now based in Berlin, while Stewart and Seo have been the band’s lynchpins over the last 15 years, in 2022 the duo were joined by percussion David Kendrick (Sparks, Devo). His inclusion makes Xiu Xiu a new force with a cohesion that’s apparent through these songs.

Starting with the sullen strings of Arp Omni. “I have almost done nothing right / My entire adult life/ But having dared to touch the fire with you / Breaks the chains of my being nothing, too,” laments Stewart, his wavering vocal adding to the song’s emotional weight, awakening those same feelings as listening to Donny Diasco all those years ago.

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Elsewhere, the ghoulish psych-pop of Maestro One Chord reaches new corners in the Xiu Xiu sound world, while Common Loon, Pale Flower and Veneficium weave in and out of a psych-laden patchwork that reveals bright new colours. It’s glittery. It’s majestic. It’s new world Xiu Xiu.

It leads into the motorik, sensory overload of T.D.F.T.W. One of Xiu Xiu’s most provocative statements, as Stewart meets the devil head-on with a narrative that hangs on a knife’s edge. A a song that simply freezes the nerve endings.

And on closing track, Piña, Coconut & Cherry, Stewart takes another giant leap. “A ballad rather than a rocker”, they croon and howl of fantasy, black holes and true love. “You can’t refuse love like this,” they scream in anguish. “You must love me / Love me/ This is mine, you are mine”. It’s as candid as Stewart has ever been.

With many facets and new dimensions, 13″ Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto with Bison Horn Grips is a marvel. It feels like the first Xiu Xiu record that you can actually take for a walk. The atmosphere, lending itself to wide open spaces where thoughts can be gathered.

Speaking to Stewart via Zoom midway through last month, they agree. “For all everyone in the band, and this is a little corny, but very true, the influence of natural spaces is incredibly pertinent and potent,” they say. “We don’t get a lot of time off on tour, but if we have half a day, or a whole day, we’ll either go to the museum or we’ll go to a national park if there’s one nearby.”

Like Knife Play, the title 13″ Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto with Bison Horn Grips follows a similar lineage: a reference to Stewart’s knife collection. And speaking of, 13″… could be considered Xiu Xiu’s Swiss army knife record. Songs that are all-purpose, immediate and radiating with forward-thinking ideas.

During our conversation, Stewart admits that they are slightly confused by the album. It’s an interesting take, and one I suspect could change with time, for it feels like one of the best albums Xiu Xiu has delivered. And, by extension, one of the finest released this year.

Sun 13: Xiu Xiu has always done its own thing, which is why I think of the band as one of the true punk acts of this century. Is that something you’ve thought about looking back on the band’s career?

Jamie Stewart: “I don’t want this to sound self-aggrandising, but it’s kind of out of my hands. I’ve sort of been that way since I was a kid. I have always been called weird since I was a child, which still bothers me now. I don’t think people meant it in a kind way. I think it’s just the way God made me. I would really love to be cool, but it’s never gonna fucking happen. (laughs)

“At this point, I’m in my mid-40s… I’m fine with it, but it’s not something we have tried to do. I think anybody who’s been involved in Xiu Xiu for a long period of time, that’s just who and how they are… just a little bit removed from the generalised path, whether or not they want to be. Myself included.” (laughs)

S13: I’ve never thought about who your inspirations were, simply because Xiu Xiu always felt so far removed from everything. Have your influences from a young age stayed with you and inspired the music you make today, or have they shifted over time?

JS: “A lot of the music when I was first becoming a serious music fan has remained incredibly important to me. I think because I’m a serious music fan, I listen to a very broad range of music. My father was a musician, and because of that was very particular about the kind of music that we could play in the house. In some ways, as a child it was a little bit irritating, because I wanted to play Def Leppard records my friends were playing. But he said, ‘You can’t listen to this, there’s much better music on earth than this.’ (laughs)

“The importance of trying to seek that out was made very clear to me, so from an early age I was listening to Talking Heads, Otis Redding and Prince. Those are the main three all-time favourites, a lot of Motown, a lot of field recordings, and a lot of recordings of indigenous music.

“In high school, I had a friend who I was in my first band with, and he had some cooler older sisters. They were really into the ’80s… 4AD records like Bauhaus, This Mortal Coil, Cocteau Twins. The Wolfgang Press was another huge one for me, they were a really big influence, especially Bird Word Cage, Nick Cave, bands like that. And then at the same time, somehow incongruously in trying to find new music, there was a public station in L.A. called KPFK that on Sundays had a reggae dub show. I was just trying to find something, and I came across that completely uninitiated. It was fascinating to listen to music that I had no reference for, that sounded totally different than anything else I would listen to.

“I was listening to all this from the time I was eight until I was about 15 or 16. And then also field recordings… that still probably makes more than half of what I continue to enjoy listening to. A lot of that made its way into Xiu Xiu.”

S13: Do you ever reflect on what you’ve done in the past, and are you generally happy with what hear you back all these years later?

JS: (Laughs) “I’m a bit ashamed to say this, but occasionally if I’m very drunk and alone, I’ll listen to some old records. I usually become embarrassed that I’m doing this. (laughs) Even if somebody caught me drunk listening to Xiu Xiu records at two in the morning it’d be completely mortifying. I’ll feel funny about saying what I’m about to say, but I’ll say it anyway… I feel very proud of the fact that we have existed for so long by some miracle, and I feel extraordinarily touched and moved by the fact that people have continued to listen to things that we’ve done even a very long time ago. But generally, as soon as we’re done with something, we start on the next thing and don’t go back to it.

“There are songs – if I haven’t listened to them in more than a decade, I don’t remember how to play them, and we decide we want to play them on tour – then I to go back and listen to it. But I’m not listening to it as a song, I’m listening to it to remember how it goes! So while I know they exist and know the years that they came out, I have memories of making them, but I don’t really have a clear memory of how they go.” (laughs)

S13: 13″ Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto with Bison Horn Grips is arguably your most accessible album to date and most certainly a leap from Ignore Grief. Can you tell us about the process behind it?

JS: “It came together very quickly. Generally, they don’t. In the last few years, it’s usually a very careful, protracted putting together of songs, trying a lot of different things. But this, by a gift from the goddess of music, a lot of the songs were just there! Before we moved to Berlin, David Kendrick came over to our home studio in L.A. and then one day we did all the drones and guitars – not the rhythm guitars – as the basis of the songs. And then we moved to Berlin and finished up the overdubs. It was one of those that just very magically was there. I feel totally unresponsible for making it. We were the people who happened to play it, but it just dropped out of the speakers by some kind of mystical process. I’m very surprised that we made this record.” (laughs).

S13: Wow, that’s interesting…

JS: “There’s some stoner rock, psychedelic elements to it, which is not something that I thought we would ever explore. We have a tradition of doing drunk commentaries of records, but I’m trying to not drink anymore, and usually it doesn’t make sense to do them until the records been out for five or six years and I’ve had a chance to really reflect and be totally removed from it. But our label asked if I would do a drunk commentary of this record for a bonus cassette. I said to them, ‘Well, I’m not drinking right now but I could do a stoned commentary of it’. I thought it was pretty stoney when I listened to it straight, but man! Listening to it when you’re high, it’s really stoney. (laughs)

“I’m certainly interested in other states of mind and liminal spaces and other dimensional types of existence. But I didn’t really think that it would have such frank representation and wiggly guitar lines. I generally think the guitar is a dumb instrument, and I’m really surprised we made a full-on guitar record. We were happy with it when we were making it, but a lot of the times we were thinking, ‘What the fuck are we doing? It sounds cool… let’s just get out of the way, it seems to be happening beyond our control’. I feel slightly confused by it, but I’m happy we tried something different, and thankful to explore the vastness of music, even though it’s a little confusing. I guess I’m confused about my own confusion.” (laughs)

S13: Talking about those of zany kind of riffs…

JS: “Zany! That’s fair.”

S13: Maestro One Chord and Common Loon are very immediate sounding, and got me thinking about Devo and David Kendrick’s involvement. How much of an influence do you think he had?

JS: “It was his idea initially. Angela and I never really listened to the psych-rock, and David is a massive fan. It’s not his main focus, but if you asked him what his favourite music was, he would say psych-rock. He began to play us a few things and said, ‘Let’s make a psych-rock record!’ and Angela and I said, ‘Okay, what’s psych-rock?’ The record going in this direction was entirely at his impetus.”

S13: Do you think that living in Berlin influenced the album at all?

JS: “It was more about not living in L.A., I think. Angela and I moved from L.A. to Berlin, and then only a couple months later were on very long tours. Immediately after that, we went into the studio and finished up the record, so we weren’t really in Berlin all that long when we were putting the finishing touches on the record.

“I think it was more beginning to come to terms with and having been unaware of what a massive influence living in L.A. had been in the last several records we made, and trying to find other sources of inspiration. I still go to L.A. to visit my family and play, but I’m beginning to realise that something that was such an important source for us isn’t going to be there anymore. I think initially that sense of loss and uncertainty made its way into a lot of the lyrics; we wrote a lot of the lyrics here. In retrospect, a lot of the songs are about coming to terms with something being gone, or coming to terms with not knowing what’s going to happen and wanting to come to terms with that shock. So musically, not so much, but definitely from an emotional process.

“I don’t know what the case is for Angela, but I know for me, I’m still in that state of trying to find what the fundamental spark for new music we’re going to work on is going to be here. It’s not a bad thing. I need to find a new door to open. Whether or not that is being in a place like it was in L.A. or in the type of process, I’m curious as to what that’s going to be.”

S13: Apr Omni is a beautifully sombre beginning. Was it the obvious choice for the opening track?

JS: “We’ve done it a few times with records, but often live we begin with the slowest, most drawn out, quiet piece of music we’ll have in the set. When we started doing it, it was from a functional standpoint. We didn’t know where to put it in the set; it seemed to conflict with the other songs, but we do it first. Not that it’s out of the way, but it has the least effect on anything else. We found that it just seemed to be a nice way to set the tone for the room.

“Sometimes it’s almost easy when you’re seeing a live show and if something is loud and far out, you can ignore it and think, ‘They’ll get to the serious stuff later’. But if it’s a slightly more difficult piece of music, it demands you pay attention, then generally people tend to pay attention. This song, the structure is fairly traditional and I don’t think it’s a difficult piece of music, but it’s very different than anything else on the record and we were finding that it seemed to work live.”

S13: With a song like Pale Flower, it highlights the abstract nature of your songwriting. With regards to your process, do you always keep a notebook handy, or is it more regimented?

JS: “I work on music every day, and I always do have a notebook with me. If I hear something on the bus, or there’s a great line in a movie, or just some thought comes over the course of beginning to work on music and collect ideas. I think a lot of people do that. Once the trajectory of the subject matter of the record starts to become apparent, you begin to go through them. 99 out of 100 things that are in there are lame, but there’ll be the occasional thing that seems to match very clearly with the emotional intent of what the music seems to be. So certainly not sitting down and doing it all the time but trying to remain prepared for when something presents itself.”

S13: Does it become easier because you’ve been writing for so long?

JS: “It’s a habit. It’s been a habit since before I was even in this band.”

S13: On T.D.F.T.W., it seems like you’re trying to untangle conflict, which is pertinent considering there’s so much of it in the world. It as if you’re trying to open up a dialog for people to reconcile their differences. Was it one of the earlier tracks written for the record?

JS: “The lyrics were written in Berlin, but the music – the main riff – David and I put together on the day we did all the recording. There were just a few months on the record, it was surprisingly quick. But you’re right. The song is about, potentially, and this is just my interpretation – I always say this and always bauk at saying what I think a song is about, because I hope people would interpret it in their own genuine, individualistic way – but for me, the song is very much about what you were describing.

“In a literal way, the song is about being faced with a physically manifested devil and what you do when you’re faced with that. Really, the only cognisant thing to do… you cannot fight ultimate evil, you cannot reason with ultimate evil, the only productive thing you can do is attempt to forgive it and see what the results could be. Metaphorically, it has to do with exactly what we’re talking about.”

S13: You and Angela have been the nucleus of the band for many years now. Do you find it easier to write music as Xiu Xiu these days because of the continuity of your alliance?

JS: “I certainly appreciate having somebody to regularly rely on. Throughout the band, there have been people who weren’t necessarily in the band that I found that I relied on in similar ways. Greg Saunier from Deerhoof, the percussionist Chess Smith and producer John Congleton have been, for lack of better description, auxiliary members. For a while, Chess was actually in the band. Angela’s been involved in the records since she joined but hasn’t been able to tour for a lot of different reasons, but completely dedicated. I’m really excited about that, because she’s even more involved than she’s been in a long time. Having been able to lean on her is spectacular. David, too; even though we don’t live in the same city, when we’re in L.A., we see each other and work together regularly.

“With David and Angela, this is the longest that Xiu Xiu’s had a regular lineup. Even though a lot of people have come and gone and there have been certain advantages to that, I’ve always wanted a regular lineup for a long list of reasons. On an individual reason based on the individual who is involved in it, it hasn’t been possible. But having people who are as talented and dedicated and interesting and creative as them – people that I can trust and hopefully they feel like they can trust me – it’s really cool to be able to work with somebody who you can count on but also continues to surprise you. I absolutely find that in both Angela and David. I’m super lucky to get to work with them.”

S13: With John Congleton and Xiu Xiu, there’s been a continuity across the alternative music landscape where you have both come up around the same time. How much of an input does he have on the final recordings?

JS: “Generally, I say, ‘Please do whatever you want and go crazy. Have a great time doing this’. I used the word trust when I was talking about Angela and David, and I absolutely have that with John, and Greg Saunier when he’s mixed our records.

“It’s incredibly exciting to be able to work with somebody who is unbelievably good at what they do. I’ve known John for years and we’ve been friends since Xiu Xiu started. I know him fairly well as a person and he knows me fairly well as a person. Because of that, I know he has our best interest at heart, but he also has a very clear conception of what the aesthetic and emotional intent of the band is and has the talent to back up, taking big risks within those parameters and improving upon them.

“I love getting records back from him and being very surprised by what he chose to emphasise or what he chose to omit, or how he may have treated particular sounds. I always find that he doesn’t really bring out the best of what we have done but makes what we have done better. There isn’t a need to look over your shoulder at all.”

S13: From his perspective, Xiu Xiu must be an absolute dream to work for, because I’m sure there are a lot of other bands that aren’t like that.

JS: (Laughs) “He’s told me that he enjoys it, and he looks forward to it, but he said it can be a little bit challenging. He says he can do a four-piece rock record basically in his sleep, he knows the exact pieces that are supposed to happen. But that’s not what we do, and we couldn’t do it even if we wanted to. He says that he appreciates that he doesn’t know what the next 30 seconds are going to become at any point.” (laughs)

S13: Back when Xiu Xiu started out, physical product was so vital. Did you ever envisage culture being reduced to an MP3 and a JPEG? 

JS: (Laughs) “I mean, streaming is even a lower quality than MP3s! I thought MP3s sounded bad, and then I realised, ‘Oh, wow, it could sound even worse!’ (laughs). No, I did not think this was going to happen. It is what it is for a long time, particularly when piracy was much rifer than it is now, although you could say essentially that Spotify is the king of piracy…

“I tried to take steps to prevent it from happening and realised that it was completely out of my hands, and it has been a long time where now, I think, ‘There’s nothing I can do about this. I’ll just listen to records the way that I like to listen to records, and people will listen to records the way that they like to listen to records. We’ll just do our best to muddle along through whatever fresh hell presents itself’.

“Maybe something great will happen next time, and then the next iteration will be amazing instead of even shittier. Who knows?”

13″ Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto with Bison Horn Grips is out Friday via Polyvinyl Record Co. Purchase from Bandcamp.