Evento

XIU XIU, Kindest Lines, Hedgehog @ Metro Gallery :: 9/11

Xiu Xiu was born on a dance floor, arriving alone at the club and going home alone from the club.

That night the first Xiu Xiu song, Jennifer Lopez, was recorded. Its line, "is it tough to watch, Friday after Friday!?," began what Xiu Xiu was going to try to say. The songs would always be about specific events in the personal lives of the band, the people close to them, and about the social and economic politics that effect and deform subjugated life from everywhere in this wobbling, wreck of a solar system.

Over the course of fifteen 7 inches, five EPs, six collaboration albums and seven full lengths (with an eighth in the works) Xiu Xiu has never shied away from any topic that is honest and meaningful to them. Their songs are about gender dysphoria, suicide, loneliness, going insane, child soldiers, the tsunami in Indonesia, hideous sex, the Sanrio character Pandapple, abortion politics, incest, cats, queer life, being raped by the police and the individual responsibility of U.S. military personnel for the families they murder. Somehow within all of this, cuteness attempts to find a way to embrace death and horrible emotion.

The music is drawn from British post punk and synth pop, modern Western classical, noise and experimental musics, Asian percussion musics, American folk, torch singers, house, techno, 1950s rock n roll and this second's top 40.

Starting in isolation in San Jose, California in 2002, Xiu Xiu has relentlessly toured all over the world since. San Jose is a rotten place to be, so relentless touring was a way to get AWAY!

The newest and best line up is Sam Mickens, Zac Pennington, Angela Seo and Jamie Stewart. They are currently cluster bombed around America in New York, Portland and Durham, NC.

Xiu Xiu have been called "self flagellating", "harsh", "brutal", "shocking" and "perverse" but also "genius", "brilliant", "unique", "imaginative" and "luminous."

September 11, 2011
Doors 8pm :: 18 & Up :: $8 adv // $10 dos

Metro Gallery
1700 North Charles Street
Baltimore, MD