Pop experimentalists Xiu Xiu have shared a new video for the title track from their most recent album, ‘FORGET’. The video stars Xiu Xiu’s Angela Seo as a performer who continually gets heckled by an audience member before brawling with her while the crowd looks on. Seo says, “I find working in the entertainment industry grotesque and mortifying. So many people in it have the horrifying combination of delusional self-grandeur and nauseating insecurities, but I still want to make and play music and art so all I can do is laugh at myself and understand that the grotesque, mortifying absurdities are just part of doing anything decent. ’FORGET’ is a perfect encapsulation of the album’s balance between avant-garde sensibilities and synth-pop catchiness.” Watch the video via YouTube below.
‘FORGET’ was recorded during a period of epic productivity for Xiu Xiu. While writing ‘FORGET,’ they released the lauded Plays the Music of Twin Peaks, collaborated with Mitski on a song for an upcoming John Cameron Mitchell film, composed music for art installations by Danh Vo, recorded an album with Merzbow and scored an experimental reworking of the Mozart opera, The Magic Flute. All of this frantic, external activity lead to a softly damaged dreaminess and broadened intent that has not been heard before in other Xiu Xiu works.
The album was produced by John Congleton (Blondie, Sigur Ros), Greg Saunier of Deerhoof and Xiu Xiu’s own Angela Seo. It features guest appearances by fabled minimalist composer Charlemagne Palestine, LA Banjee Ball superstar commentator Enyce Smith, Swans guitar virtuoso Kristof Hahn and legendary drag artist and personal hero of Xiu Xiu, Vaginal Davis.
Standout track, Wondering is one of the catchiest boogie pop gems in the Xiu Xiu catalog, but like much of ‘FORGET,’ it still bears an underlying tension that manifests differently in each piece. From the haunted guitar duet of Petite, the hilariously fraught lyrics of Get Up, the advanced industrial boxing match of Jenny GoGo, or the experimental goth explosion of Faith, Torn Apart, all the songs in their own way build to a roiling boil of a fate in vanishing.
The calligraphy on the cover translates literally to “we forget.” It bows to the universality of everything and everyone’s inevitable decline and foggy disappearance. Regarding the album title, Xiu Xiu singer Jamie Stewart said, “To forget uncontrollably embraces the duality of human frailty. It is a rebirth in blanked out renewal but it also drowns and mutilates our attempt to hold on to what is dear. ‘FORGET’ is both the palliative fade out of a traumatic past but also the trampling pain of a beautiful one’s decay.”
‘FORGET’ track listing
The Call
Queen of the Losers
Wondering
Get Up
Hay Choco Bananas
Jenny GoGo
At Last, At Last
Forget
Petite
Faith, Torn Apart
Order ‘FORGET’: http://smarturl.it/XiuXiu-Forget
Xiu Xiu is on tour now. Xiu Xiu’s live performances are cathartic and revelatory, and not to be missed.
Tour dates
10/28 – Buenos Aires, Argentina @ Centro Cultural General San Martín
11/11 – Somerville, MA @ ONCE @ Hassle Fest 9
11/28 – Dresden, Germany @ GrooveStation
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