Album Review: Xiu Xiu – Angel Guts: Red Classroom
There’s always something cinematic about Xiu Xiu records. Stark, melancholic images of lonely people–perhaps lingering invisibly behind a curtain or reaching towards a glowing stove in a dark kitchen–are frequently evoked by Jamie Stewart’s distinctive lyrics. Angel Guts: Red Classroom conjures up a cast of similar characters.
Except that the imagery here, as well as the music, is even darker than usual; denser, and more intense. Stewart wrote the album largely in isolation, after having moved to an LA neighbourhood so dangerous that he wasn’t able to leave the house at night; a sense of alienation that’s genuinely disquieting permeates the whole thing.
The pulsating bass and transient synths of ‘Archie’s Fades’ create a sense of brooding movement. Listening to it feels like driving alone at night along a freeway, the glare of streetlights providing intermittent illumination in the darkness. “The truck you drive could easily crash into another, and bigger, truck,” Stewart whispers, in a voice so fragile that it’s almost submerged beneath the music.
Where there are interactions between people, they are of an extreme or exploitative nature. ‘Black Dick’ narrates a pornographic scene, Stewart lingering over the articulation of the song’s title repeatedly, while the percussion of a buoyant drum machine creates an incongruous, carnival-esque backdrop.
In ‘Cinthya’s Unisex,’ another insistent bassline, like the excited thudding of a heart, soundtracks the voyeurism of someone through a keyhole. “You look so cute when you’re confused,” croons Stewart, and later on, “You’re so confused when you’re cute.” Frenzied shrieking of the word ‘no,’ and then ‘yes,’ creates an ambiguous atmosphere in which affection and exploitation overlap and blur together. The introduction of frenetic cymbals and blasts of white noise escalate the tension.
Musically, the album possess an encompassing density, created by bass frequencies not to be found on the previous few Xiu Xiu records. Only sounds generated by analogue synths, drum kits and ‘70s analogue drum machines are used, providing the songs with a fluent, relentless drive that contrasts with the often fragmented nature and rhythmic flourishes of Dear God I Hate Myself or Women As Lovers.
A hammering kick drum imbues ‘Stupid in the Dark’ with the propulsion that characterises much of the album, while waves of noise usher in expansive, climbing synth harmonies. ‘Lawrence Liquors’ and ‘Adult Life’ maintain the fraught tempo, intermittently smothering the bubbling bass with slabs of buzzing or squealing sound that are as thrilling to hear as they are jarring.
Elsewhere, the disorientation engendered by the really discordant, uncompromising tracks (‘The Silver Platter’, ‘El Naco’), is deftly balanced by the serene beauty of ‘New Life Immigration’ and the soaring, anthemic lumber of ‘Botanica De Los Angeles.’
The latter song would allow the album to end on a hopeful note, sonically, were it not for the final track, ‘Red Classroom’–an almost painful aural experience in which a gentle sound, like a whistling wind, is violently and repeatedly disrupted by chainsaw-like screeches of pure noise.
But it is this closer that encapsulates what it is that makes Angel Guts: Red Classroom, and Xiu Xiu as a band, so compelling: a marriage of melody and noise, of beauty and ugliness, the ambiguity of which throws up new surprises on every listen.
– Jake O’Leary
