Xiu Xiu -- Fabulous Muscles

9/10

I can't remember the first Xiu Xiu song I heard, only that I heard it at the radio station I DJ'd at, and that I thought it was cool. Then, I researched his albums. One of them had a naked nude on it. Eventually, I found that the song I liked was on his 2004 album, Fabulous Muscles. I bought that album in early 2006, and really enjoyed it. Frontman, Jamie Stewart, has a knack...well, several knacks. The first is his skill at blending electronic music and loops and sequencing with more organic stuff, like guitar, and horns and weird percussion (I remember hearing that at one point in the recording of this album, he put a vibrator in a jar, and used the remote to create the percussion for one of these tracks). When I bought Fabulous Muscles in early 2006, I was recording my own music (vibrator free, though), and I did a few experiments to try to replicate Xiu Xiu's style on this album--I found I could actually do it quite well (I nailed a replication of "Brian the Vampire," and also wrote a decent song about how I kid I went to high school with murdered an elderly couple for drug money). Stewart has one of those voices where it seems it's easier for him to stay in pitch if he's whisper-screaming, which isn't something that's easy for me to explain, other than that it's easier for me to stay in pitch that way too. In the spirit of the emotions Fabulous Muscles wears on far more than its sleeve, I'll just continue on letting this review be a mess. And that brings me to Stewart's other knack.
This is gross, and you're probably not going to be interested in this album anyway, so you should probably stop reading. The best analogy I can give for what Stewart does with emotions on Fabulous Muscles is the time in 1995 that my dad and my brother and I went to McDonald's on the way to a fishing trip in Grand Isle, Louisiana. We all got a quarter-pounder with cheese, and we all got food poisoning. My uncle and cousin got Chicken McNuggets, so they were fine. The three of us realized we had been food poisoned the next morning, when we were about 30 miles away from land, in one-to-two foot seas. At the marina that morning, I'd gotten hostess cupcakes and white cheese popcorn, and my brother got powdered donuts. I thought I'd bought chocolate cupcakes, but the marina store was dimly lit, and it turned out I'd bought carrot cake. I didn't love them, but I ate them anyway. So with our stomachs full on the previous night's McDonalds and that morning's bayside convenience store feast, we started to feel nauseous. Before you knew it, the three of us were lying around in great pain and anguish, while my uncle and cousin fished happily. And then, it happened. As the sweltering Louisiana summer heat beat down on my head, I realized that if I felt any worse than I did in that exact moment, I would die, so I did the only thing I knew  to do. I bent over the side of the boat, and stuck my finger down my throat.
The amount of material that left my body over the next seven-to-ten minutes was likely a fish feast for the ages. For the last few hurls, before the dry-heaving started, I began to wonder if there would be anything left of me but a hollowed shell. I've never vomited like that in my entire life--in fact, I somehow went nearly 12 years without vomiting again after this horrific event transpired. My dad and brother vomited too. I'll never forget the way the powdered sugar looked, bobbing on the gleaming waves. To this day, I've never been able to eat carrot cake again, and I'm not sure if my brother has ever been able to touch a powdered donut. And yet, the actual process of vomiting in that seaborne moment felt amazing...and that's what Fabulous Muscles does with emotion.
The lyrical content of Fabulous Muscles is so, so, so, so, so messed up. I was at a weird stage in life in early 2006, in simplest terms, exchanging one cult mindset for another, and very codependent, so listening to this then so much probably wasn't too great for me. Check the lyrics to "Little Panda McElroy (b)," which is probably one of the more "positive" songs on the album:

I can stop lying
I can stop punching my own face
I can stop stealing money
I can stop hating my own heart

I can do it
I can do it
I can do it
Because of you

I can stop scratching up my cheeks
I can stop drinking so much
I can stop wanting to kill myself
I can stop wanting your perfect heart

I can do it
Because of you

Any therapist worth their salt would have a field day with this lyricist, trying to make them realize that they need to be able to do these things because of themself or a higher power, and NOT because of another person. Those lyrics feature some seriously disturbing codependency. The song's huge washes of synth, which come during each chorus, feel like confessions, as they punctuate an otherwise dark and minimalistic landscape. As messed up as the lyrical content is, this is a powerful, incredibly written song from a musical standpoint. Almost every single song here is powerful, incredibly written, and imaginatively realized, even as lyrically, they apparently discuss, in no particular order, Stewart being in a sexually and physically abusive relationship, a kid Stewart worked with through his old job who looked like a vampire from sleep deprivation because the kid was being raped by his brother every night, the extremely conflicted feelings Stewart felt after his father's suicide (including the detail that his sister-in-law had to push the dead dad's dentures back into his mouth), and Stewart's extremely graphic description of why a blanket "Support Our Troops..." sentiment might not be advisable. 

This is a dark damn album. But it's also so damn good. 


2004 5 Rue Christine
1. Crank Heart 3:19
2. I Luv the Valley OH! 2:59
3. Bunny Gamer (b) 2:40
4. Little Panda McElroy (b) 4:25
5. Support Our Troops OH! (Black Angels OH!) 4:46
6. Fabulous Muscles (Mama Black Widow Version) 4:10
7. Brian the Vampire 2:38
8. Nieces Pieces (Boat Knife Version) 3:33
9. Clowne Towne 3:50
10. Mike 5:13