Xiu Xiu - Ignore Grief (2023) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

Ignore Grief is the thirteenth studio album by American experimental band Xiu Xiu, released on March 3, 2023, by Polyvinyl. It was written by band frontman Jamie Stewart and new member David Kendrick. It was produced by fellow member Angela Seo, and recorded by Stewart at his home studio in Los Angeles, alongside a wide array of guest musicians including Charlie Looker, Ben Chisholm, Ezra Buchla, Patrick Shiroishi and Ian Wellman. The album artwork was designed by Janelle Abad, and depicts a white bat over a black background.

Ignore Grief is a departure from the band's previous album, more in line with the sounds and themes seen in Girl with Basket of Fruit (2019). It mainly features a sound that embodies experimental, industrial, and modern classical music. Instrumentally, it incorporates orchestral instrumentation including violins, violas, cellos, double bass, flutes and piano, in addition to the electronic percussion and synthesizers typically used by the band, as well as a variety of other instruments, including, gongs, double reed flute and found objects. Its lyrical content explores life's horrors and human tragedy, dealing with prostitution, sex trafficking, murder, cults and substance abuse, through two halves, one inspired by real stories, and the other one by imaginary ones, sang each by Seo and Stewart.

This is a record of halves.

Angela Seo sings on half of the record. Jamie Stewart sings on half of the record.

Half of the songs are experimental industrial. Half of the songs are experimental modern classical.

Half of it is real. Half of it is imaginary.

The real songs attempt to turn the worst life has offered to five people the band is connected with into some kind of desperate shape that does something, anything, other than grind and brutalize their hearts and memory within these stunningly horrendous experiences.

The imaginary songs are an expansion and abstract exploration of the early rock and roll “Teen Tragedy” genre as jumping off point to decontaminate the band’s own overwhelming emotions in knowing and living with what has happened to these five people.

What none of this record does and despite the oft repeated assertion, what Xiu Xiu has never done, is attempt to superficially shock the listener. Instead, Xiu Xiu has spent twenty years grappling with how to process, to be empathetic towards, to disobey and to reorganize horror; there is no other word for it other than horror.

The motivation for writing Ignore Grief to be about a child who was sold into prostitution by his mother, a junior high student who was kidnapped and murdered, incessantly choosing alcohol and cocaine over one’s family, becoming lost in the bleakest, darkest aspects of cultish spirituality and committing suicide as means to escape and protest a life of violent sex work is because the members of Xiu Xiu themselves are deeply shocked.

Old friend and new member David Kendrick (Sparks, Devo, Gleaming Spires) joins Angela Seo and Jamie Stewart through whatever this may be and whatever it may mean and why ever it may have occurred. The point of aesthetic examination is to see if there is any way to come out the other side or if there is even any reason. In either case there may not be but to simply turn away would be yet a further act of destruction.

“I had now lost all confidence in myself, doubted all men immeasurably, and abandoned all hopes for the things of this world, all joy, all sympathy, eternally. This was the truly decisive incident of my life. I had been split through the forehead between the eyebrows, a wound that was to throb with pain whenever I came into contact with a human being.”

Tracklist:
01. The Real Chaos Cha Cha Cha
02. 666 Photos of Nothing
03. Esquerita, Little Richard
04. Maybae Baeby
05. Tarsier, Tarsier, Tarsier, Tarsier
06. Pahrump
07. Border Factory
08. Dracula Parrot, Moon Moth
09. Brothel Creeper
10. For M.


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