A Promise

A Promise is Xiu Xiu's second LP, and was released 18 Feb. 2003 on 5 Rue Christine. It continued the experimental harshness, unsettling weirdness, and viscerally powerful sound that created a(n) famous/infamous reputation for Jamie Stewart, the band's central member and singer, that had followed him from his debut, Knife Play.

This record is a more polished effort than the debut was. Production levels are higher, more instruments are used, and the sound is just more clean overall. Stewart's voice, while it still reaches uniquely disquieting and powerful tones with sheer force and drama, is a bit more controlled this time around. The lyric matter is still probing and confrontational - it is as if he is voicing deep-set unconscious fears and tragedies, perhaps of his own history, with tales of family relationships gone wrong, sex (the embarrassment, the violence, the hedonism, the shock… everything really), and they sound like secrets a person would normally hide from others. It's what makes Xiu Xiu so distinguished in today's music: Stewart really "goes there," so to speak. This element of his lyrical styling is what makes the band so divisive**: some people are delightfully surprised to find music that is actually able to shock and scare people (and in this day and age, perhaps that is quite an achievement), but other people just don't have an ear for all the avant-garde flairs or the taboo references.

The record contains a cover song: Fast Car. Originally by Tracy Chapman, Stewart's rendition of the song is a very sparse and minimal interpretation; it's just him with an acoustic guitar, and in the context of the album, it's an odd, moody piece of restrained weirdness compared to the other songs.

Otherwise, the band tends toward noise, frenetic tempos, dissonances and theatrical vocal arrangements to elicit the palpable oddness in their songs. Highlights of these elements in action include Apistat Commander, Sad Redux-o-Grapher, Blacks, and Ian Curtis Wishlist (an especially eerie tribute to the late Joy Division singer that features some of the most blaring but emotional synthesizer work ever recorded).

**: (Famously, the website Fakejazz rated Knife Play with question marks rather than numbers as usual; he is no less polarizing in this record, but there is better production to mitigate some of the negative responses that happened before this record.)