xiu xiu / fucked corpse
25-06-2007
babylon, ottawa
my memory of going to this show is that i was bored on a monday night and looking through show listings, checked out a few sound samples and went on a whim. i'd been recently laid off (with severance :)) after working nights for about a year, so it was more about the newly regained freedom of going out on a nice summer night - and it *did* seem interesting enough, if a little undeveloped. i found the show interesting and cathartic on some level, certainly the use of percussion was notable and effective, but my opinion of xiu xiu has remained pretty consistent: it always sounds unfinished, and they've never really reached their potential.
i don't know xiu xiu's discography well enough to talk about setlists. this was almost ten years ago now, and my interest simply never piqued enough to really explore their work. i want to clarify the point: this wasn't the first time i'd heard of xiu xiu, but the samples i'd heard going back a few years (you'll forgive my fuzzy memory, years later, around acts i wasn't excited by, but i do remember already knowing who they were when i skeptically examined la foret around the time of release), then, from this point, really weren't interesting enough to me to generate any kind of solid listening and the truth is that i really did just go out on a whim to get some fresh air and a beer and watch a show on this night. in fact, i was quite *broadly* disinterested in the generation of bands that came up a little after the turn of the century, which unfortunately happened to be my own generation, and just largely skipped out on them altogether. within the broad grouping of them, xiu xiu is actually one of the acts that i got closest to actually getting engaged by, but it's just so sparse and empty that i ultimately don't find myself listening to anything. there are points when they *could* really go over board and pump out some kind of post-coil pagan imperial death march or something, but they never actually work up the nerve to actually do it. further, they consistently ruin the claustrophobic atmospheres by these tiring delves into sappy pop. so, you get all these sketches of ideas that never fill themselves in and ultimately never really accomplish anything, ultimately rendering themselves pointless...
ambition is great. but, ambition without execution is just empty pretension, which is such a dominant characteristic across the spectrum of this early millenial or late gen x music. if it was a quarter of what it wanted to be, it would be as brilliant as some claim it is - but i never get the feeling that it's even more than a tenth of what it really aspires to be, and an honest reaction to it needs to point this out, clearly.
what i remember is that there were certainly some faster moving post-punk tracks played in ottawa, but the set was, broadly, far more focused on slower moving, slow-burning type tracks that made a lot of use of sweeping percussion. there's some of that in this set, but my memory was that the general focus was in the opposite direction. but, i've concluded that my memory is fuzzy and that i'm exaggerating the parts i liked....
i guess that speaks volumes for how i've been able to react to the band: i would have probably been able to delve a lot deeper into their recordings if they focused more on the side of their sound that sees them working out their frustrations through dark polyrhythms and industrial noise, climaxing over crescendos that demonstrate some kind of process. it's a shame that they never really walked down this path.
but, i think that i may have actually randomly picked the best time to see them, relative to my own tastes.
i initially felt that the following video was the tail end of touring the previous record, whereas what i saw seemed to be a pre-tour for the 2008 disc (which was for sale at the show, months before it was released). this is largely because i initially thought that this set was more upbeat and "post-punk" than the one i saw, which had a darker feel that was overpowered by the liberal use of percussion (i remember all three of them playing drums, at points). but, all evidence for setlists from this period suggests that they did not touch the new material, and it's funny how your memory can pull out details that you otherwise forgot, in order to confirm evidence that is put in front of you: i'm now remembering them actually explicitly point out that they couldn't play the new material for legal reasons, despite having the cd for sale. however, take that memory for what it is, given the circumstances. so, i do now believe that the 2007 set in ottawa would have been more similar to the shows in the spring than not, and that the following video is a decent representation of what i saw. if they played new material, i see no evidence of it. note that there is some ottawa footage up top.