Last year, Jamie Stewart’s solo shows proved that less can be (frighteningly, excoriatingly) more, because one man onstage – screaming, gibbering, and sweatily gurning – is far more disturbing than any frontman you care to name, throwing shapes as part of a gang. A show billed as “intimate” can make you wonder why this person couldn’t find a single friend to play with, but when it’s Jamie Stewart, you think: maybe this is what Stephen Patrick Morrissey or Ian Curtis looked like in front of their mirror. This time round, putting the Xiu in Xiu Xiu is Angela Seo, and as we know from the new album (Dear God I Hate Myself) the pair have accomplished the rare feat of making their best work, seven albums in. If you came prepared to treat this as a debut for Caralee’s replacement, though, think again…

First things first: Blue on Blue are a stripped-down, garage take on shoegaze; the boy / girl guitarists could be Bobby Gillespie and Kim Deal (both circa 1988) from the way they dress, and there’s something pleasantly retro about the presentation, like you’re discovering MBV for yourself; y’know, circa 1988. Compared to a “now”-band like SVIIB (with their twin vocalists), what Blue on Blue miss out on in terms of harmonies, they more than make up by having a live drummer (when he lays off the high-hat). At the end, the guitar left to feedback in front of the amp gets its own round of applause. I’ve got a wishlist of things that would make them tremendous, but the point is: they could be tremendous.

Xiu Xiu’s tourmates, Woom, are tremendous, right now. In fact, they’re so obviously Everett True’s Favourite New Band in the World, someone should tell him. Yes, the net result of their influences (or, more accurately, their raw intuition) ends up somewhere like Young Marble Giants, but it’s our YMG, for the 21st century (actual influences, according to Sara: Terry Riley, Bridget Fontaine, 1970s performance art guru Jerome Rothenberg). Between them, Sara and Eben clack woodblocks, manipulate samples, and drive around massive blasts of bass the way Scout Niblett plays drums. Vocal hooks and melodic guitar lines are dropped in periodically, but more like samples than the bones of the songs. They’re NOT, in any respect, “amniotic” – they sculpt space, as in air, with sounds that are staccato, irregular, angular, never liquid. Their best “songs” sound like the moment that ideas came together for Thriller, or “Into the Groove(y)”, the Sonic Youth version. Having moved in sync, improvising dances more like Tai Chi, the pair finally harmonize on a song as pretty, perfect, and effortless, as Beat Happening’s “Indian Summer”. There’s a rush to the back of the room to ask Howdyoudothat?!

At last: Xiu Xiu are back. Tough and tattooed, the pair assemble their “percussion rigs” (as it seems only fair to call the frames for tiny cymbals, triangles, and assorted metal to bash). Jamie’s still dressed for boot-camp (head shaved at the sides), and in the heaviest moments, points his guitar like he’s spraying the crowd with machine-gun fire, while Angela raises the sticks high over her head like a hatchet aimed at the head of a cheating lover. Unlike old tourmates, Liars, Xiu Xiu are happy to play old numbers, and write outrageously poppy songs (‘Gray Death’ – the best song Smashing Pumpkins never wrote; ‘I Luv the Valley, Oh!”, same for Joy Division). How they retain credibility-qua-artiness, is by teetering on the edge of chaos and cacophony at almost any given moment. After all, Jamie can’t help writing superb melodies that should be massive hits, he’s just far more interested in (clattering, shrieking, squirking) noise as a legitimate, nuanced form of expression; using the hooks to keep us listening. ‘Gray Death’ should be one of the catchiest moments, but ‘Dear God’, straight after, surpasses it in spite of a clumsier tune, because it’s an explosion in a cathedral (as Carpentier called his surrealist novel, after a Dali painting); you get all the force, all the destructive rage, but see every last fragment flying past in all its former elegance. In the moments between flailing, frantic dancing, as Jamie hooks up a Nintendo, you realize Atari Teenage Riot never pulled this off, and all the hyperbole poured on Crystal Castles belongs to Xiu Xiu, and always did. As a queer, subversive take on electro-acoustic pop, Xiu Xiu are the iron fist to Patrick Wolf’s velvet glove. Dear God...