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Rating:
Trusting is beautiful…!
If I hadn’t trusted the many recommendations my debaserian friends gave me over these LONG two years, my collection wouldn't boast so many precious records.
With Xiu Xiu, it was the same thing.
My Zzzzz spoke about them with such enthusiasm that I couldn't help but buy "A Promise"… One of those records with which you initially have a more than troubled relationship and begin to love after numerous listens. Yet, I admit even after listening to “Fag Patrol” sent by her, I understood that there was still something eluding me, I couldn't fully share that enthusiasm and had I not gone to see them last Saturday, I would have never understood.
Saturday night, midnight, Velvet in Rimini…
the wait begins to be heavy, too much tiredness, too many piadine and too many Gin Lemon. Asband is, among other things, unaware of what awaits him since I wanted to be mischievous by not allowing him to listen to anything from Xiu Xiu before the concert.
We are sprawled over a step in the venue.
I would be tempted to lean on a shoulder and fall asleep when a red blot appears on stage.
It’s Jamie Stewart dressed in a fiery red tracksuit (or Valentino red as you might prefer), his presence immediately wakes me, and during the ten minutes he takes to set up his gear, everything becomes very clear.
Perhaps for the first time, an artist about to play transmits to me such energy but above all, such urgency.
In those ten minutes he spends preparing the table with all his strange instruments, I could compare him to a lover about to meet his woman after months.
After a few movements, you understand that Jamie Stewart if he hadn’t exorcised his neuroses and demons with music, he might have gone mad, but now he's there, tense, measured, a bundle of nerves ready for the first attack, not looking below the stage even for a moment; we are 50, perhaps even less, but to him, it seems he doesn't even notice us.
The creature (because just calling her a woman is an understatement) by his side we notice later. She is his opposite, blonde, delicate. Their precise and quick movements are so fascinating that they already form part of the concert for me.
They finally start, and for an hour and a half, I struggle to distinguish one piece from another. Xiu Xiu's music is a magma from which it is very difficult to extract the sounds coming out of the most disparate objects and in the end, you tire of "understanding" because there’s little to comprehend, especially when madness is lucid and pure. The contrasts of Jamie are splendid, when he sings and plays, he's completely out of reality in a sort of trance, utters his phrases, perhaps nonsensical to us, eyes half-closed. Then he "comes back" lucid and precise, looking at her, his opposite, to ensure she holds the right "instrument" which might serve to produce deafening and obsessive sounds or discreetly accompany a slow ballad making each new attack a surprise.
It’s not easy, if not impossible, to explain the music of this group, therefore, going to see them is a must... In short, as Trell says… those who don’t go or don’t know them…
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