Xiu Xiu - Ceremony
This is the worst vacation ever! I am going to cut open your forehead with a roofing shingle!—that minor tantrum from “I Broke Up” is probably Xiu Xiu’s most famous line. Indeed, the lyric gets to the core of the group’s confrontational, self-obsessed music. Xiu Xiu tries their damnedest to be weird, shocking, victimized, worthless, revolting, etc.—which often works when they have a bunch of noise and electronics to drown out the screaming. But you already know this and we don’t listen to Xiu Xiu much for this reason.
Anyway, here’s Xiu Xiu murdering the New Order classic, and I’m quite fond of it. The band put out a song called “Ian Curtis Wishlist”, so I get the sense that this cover is as hostile as it is sincere. Thus, where Joy Division robotically confined themselves to musical rigidity and emotional restraint, Xiu Xiu blows up the song, cramming as much dissonance and malfunction as possible. In a way, this is the flipside of the kind of disorder that JD obsessed over: “she’s lost control” becomes “let’s lose control”—or something. It’s tempting to psychologize this take on the song—how fucking emo and Generation Y of them! Personally, I’m left struggling with the paradox of the group: If screaming is your way of showing that you are sincere and have something to say, then why do you scream all the time?
