Curious and unafraid, curious and unafraid
No more black. The impenetrable one that is used for pain, for mourning. Now we move from the crime scenes located in Los Angeles to Berlin. The color returns, that logo set on the X, forged by a famous Italian brand knife. And here comes the movement. Yes, because after intense and musically devastating records, Jamie Stewart – accompanied by Angela Seo and David Kendrick – with “13” Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto With Bison Horn Grips” presents us with the most accessible and danceable record in Xiu Xiu's recent history. Accessible but not frivolous, without distorting the iconoclastic nature of the project. Not that there has been a lack of moments of this kind in the recent past.
I think of “Pumpkin Attack On Mommy And Daddy” (“Girl With Basket Of Fruit”), but they were songs embedded in complex and painful themes. “13” Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto With Bison Horn Grips” is instead coherent under the same sound dimension, although “Arp Omni” is a misleading intro, and could come from or be inserted in one of the previous chapters. The real beginning, the The opening of the dance is “Maestro One Chord” which is followed by the even more enthralling “Common Loon”, chosen as the first single of the work (with attached video clip starring the performer Alicia McDaid), where the guitars and the synthetic apparatus are supported by Kendrick's percussion all mixed again by John Congleton.
The lyrics are always filled with Stewart's obsessions and “Pale Flower” and “Sleep Blvd.” they leave us with the band's most deviant sound glories, so much so that they both recall “Stupid in the Dark” on “Angel Guts: Red Classroom”. Once you get past the excellent “Veneficium”, if you've been stuck until now, “TDFTW” will shake you up, an acronym for that “The Devil forgiven, that's why” screamed in the chorus. After the synthetic and dissonant beats of the industrial “Bobby Bland”, a carpet of synthesizers opens the final “Piña, Coconut & Cherry”.
After having written some of the most extreme and experimental pages of recent years, Xiu Xiu – let's remember: now on their seventeenth album – with “13” Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto With Bison Horn Grips” produce a work which, while reducing the experimental element, it doesn't sacrifice the emotional and sonic intensity that has always characterized Jamie Stewart's releases.
02/09/2024
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
