Xiu Xiu

If you're a "fan", Jamie Stewart is a real treat: he's a tall, good-looking guy with a smooth face, as sunny and likeable off stage (which, given the lyrics he writes, is quite a surprise) as he is focused, intense and flawless when he plays and sings.

If, on the other hand, you're not really a "fan", and in fact these much-hyped Xiu Xiu leave you a bit puzzled, if you wisely distrust Jamie Stewart's stuttering, filtered voice (a desperate Mark Hollis? A teenage Alan Vega?) and all the paranoia he pours into his records, if you're looking for confirmation, a denial, or simply want Xiu Xiu to prove right in front of your eyes what they're worth, well, this is a show you really can't afford to miss. You'll find yourselves facing two people (there were four of them in the early days, ed.), a guy and a girl, holed up between two tall harmoniums, four amplifiers and a synth, as if building a shelter, a microcosm in which to summon the ghosts of their songs.

Anyone who's heard Xiu Xiu knows what I'm talking about: it's not easy to picture them recreating, in a "rock" show, those hymns to despair, those brief outpourings of the soul and of Stewart's tangled mind. Xiu Xiu's songs are pure emotion and pure sensation, so detached from space and time that they seem to vibrate with their own echo.

How do you strip bare such intimate, delicate creations on a merciless stage?

Jamie takes on this challenge head-on, opening with the title track of the album they're touring behind: "Faboulous Muscles". Right away it's clear to everyone that this has nothing to do with mixing filters or effects: that's really how his voice sounds. And as soon as he touches his overdriven electric guitar, in a second he's leading us wherever he wants, like the Pied Piper of Hamelin (or rather, of San Jose, California).

But that's not all there is to it. Live, all the "noise" that blurs the songs to the listener's ear elegantly evaporates, leaving Xiu Xiu's celebrated arrangements as the deserving stars of the show: little electronic figures snatched from synth-pop and twisted out of shape like the "little melody" of a Kraftwerk-style calculator, small cymbals played with sticks as thin as chopsticks, strange ticking weights tied to telephone cords, a decisive synth line paving the way for Jamie's vocal dissonances, and finally the harmoniums lifting everything into a dreamlike, elevated atmosphere that crashes down on us with its overflowing intensity. To say the result is something completely original is an understatement.

The audience is amazed, stunned, trying to rise above the emotion to pay attention, but Xiu Xiu keep coming, landing blow after blow. They play a few things from earlier albums (including "Helsabout", sung in the delicate, shy voice of Caralee McElroy, the band's second and last member) in a fairly varied set of just the right length (a good hour or so), but the real thrill comes from the gems of "Faboulous Muscles": a ticking, beep-lit "Clowne Towne", a "Crank Heart" more desperate and pulsing than ever, a "Nieces Pieces" built entirely on overlapping harmoniums, and, above all, Xiu Xiu's own take on new wave, here it is, "I Luv The Valley Oh!", instantly recognizable from the first riff. The crowd is ready to be moved, and they offer a version that swaps the pure rock riff of the chorus for a murky sequence of synth notes, as if goading the audience, building the tension to a peak before the release we'd been waiting for since the start of the show: yes, screaming along with Jamie "Je t'aime the valley OHHHHH". That's the climax, and everything is packed into that scream. Everything each person in the room is feeling, thinking, everything each of us feels we are in that moment, is right there inside it.

It's a rock sound, the kind played in the second millennium, one that finds its universality in the most individualistic, most intimate of compositions. And forgive me if that's not enough.

Ride the wave of great music

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