Xiu Xiu

Chris Garneau starts his set hunched over a harmonia, on the floor, pumping out chords and singing with a great deal of anguish over the top. The stark lighting adds to the dramatic effect. Someone behind me mentions something about the harmonia representing a dying loved one on the floor, and the pumping his attempts at resuscitation, which makes sense. I’d be more sure, but there’s an awful lot of anguish in his voice, and the lyrics are none-too-clear.

It’s a promisingly audacious start that’s not really lived up to with the rest of the set. Sitting down behind a Rhodes piano, he spins out warm but delicate, slightly minimalist chords and lines and sings his somewhat Aimee Mann-y songs. Bright Eyes and Elliot Smith would be reference points if the lyrics weren’t quite so trite, but they’re delivered with enough conviction and on-the-verge-of-tears vibrato that you feel a certain admiration for him.

Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart’s levels of anguish and grumpiness make Chris Garneau seem positively Disneyfied in comparison. However, triteness is the last thing you could possibly accuse him of. Where so many bands would take an influence like Public Image Ltd and confine and regiment it, Xiu Xiu’s most immediate and danceable moments take the melodic bass, pounding drums and guitar scree of the post punk touchstones as a starting point for something still-more unhinged and visceral.

That’s less than half of the story – much of the set veers between torrents of unmetered noise and pointillist applications of timbres like melodica, upright bass harmonics and collections of cymbals. It is fearlessly unstandardised – parps of melody come in unpalatable cluster chords where simple harmonies could be deployed, and not in a petulant way, but in a genuinely disconcerting, disorienting manner.

Even more disconcerting is the silence and reverence of the audience. As this is apparently the band’s second-ever UK gig, it’s no surprise that everyone is intent on hearing every moment of it as clearly as possible, and Lord knows it makes a change, but the almost complete lack of movement or dancing to a band who employ so much percussion so brilliantly is frankly unsettling.

Drummer Ches Smith is outstanding throughout, swaying between insanely impressive and expressive avant-garde playing and powerful rocking out. Overall it’s a set with inspiring highlights and a constant sense that something special is happening, even if sometimes you’re waiting for it, rather than experiencing it. If only they’d play here a bit more often, the tension and anticipation could dissipate a little and we’d see the music stand completely on its merits.