Xiu Xiu at The Grand Social on October 29th 2010
Review by Fiona Donnellan
The Darklight Festival this year is the Heroes Edition, and thankfully the festival alumni and contributors Skinny Wolves deemed the heroic Xiu Xiu worthy of headlining the Friday night in The Grand Social.
Support on the night was from the appropriately named Former Ghosts and Cixous Ghost, with the Halloween weekend you couldn’t make that shit up, positively ghoulish.
Xiu Xiu are no strangers to Dublin shores and they never disappoint; one of those bands so spookily enthralled with their performance that they barely notice the audience, you know they’d be rocking out just as hard if they were alone in a dark room somewhere. They’re totally in tune with each other and everything about their performance highlights the successful pairing of Jamie Stewart and percussionist Angela Seo.
After they’re sound check and a pre game chant Stewart took no time to ease into their eerie performance while Seo was captivating, standing behind a wall of Korg synth, stacked cymbals and an array instruments, including a duck whistle.
The vocals of Stewart have been fittingly described as theatrical, as he moans, screams, barks and lurches through an emotionally intense live show.
For someone who was walking around the venue before show with a jar of honey in his hand his vocals were flawless. He started with a beautiful track, which then moved into the more familiar fragmented soundings of Xiu Xiu of old. His voice is so bitter sweet, with haunting lyrics mixed with shaky wavering ballads and yet always a controlled vocal register.
Despite the changing cast members of Xiu Xiu over the years and the departure of Caralee McElroy in 2009 fans are never disappointed and there was their same familiar sound last night, no tricks just a pure treat.
Unfortunately, this Xiu Xiu epic performance was kind of lost on the crowd last night, they seemed restless and unappreciative zombies minus a handful of genuine fans. The Darklight Festival seemed to have attracted some confused and auditory offended couples on their first date, more interested in making out then making happy with the performance of a truly seasoned and darkly charismatic band.
Just the second night of their European tour, with their latest album Dear God, I Hate Myself , the 7th album was part produced by former member and Deerhoof’s Greg Saunier. The album features the note worthy tracks Chocolate Makes me Happy and the album’s title track.
The support for the tour came from Former Ghosts, and to be honest having seen Xiu Xiu play before I was more excited about this performance. This was helped along by the fact that Former Ghosts front man Freddy Ruppert was scarily beautiful.
Former Ghosts is the brain child of Ruppert. He collaborates on the project with Stewart on guitar for several tracks so it works amazingly well. The first track immediately made me stand up and take notice, it was literally an explosion of sound; huge drums mixed with guitar rifts, electronic beats and haunting vocals.
Like Stewart, Ruppert’s vocals have been described as Ian Curtis esque but there was more of a Daniel Johnston feel to it for me; emotive.
It’s not like me to focus primarily on vocals but with these two artists it’s hard to focus on anything else. It’s their vocals that define them.
Former Ghosts played the first three songs with Stewart and then finished out his 45 minute set by himself behind his laptop triggering samples and downing Jack Daniels. It wasn’t polished, it was raw, it was awesome.
Fellow band member Nika Roza Danilova of Zola Jesus joins the tour Monday so the set will change, so the Dublin crowd got a unique look at the Former Ghosts front man.
Dublin based Cixous Ghost, were the first act on stage. It would have nice to have heard a few more tracks from Emily Aoibheann and her live band. They didn’t seem to get into their stride. When asked if she had time for another she was told bluntly…No.
Boo!