Xiu Xiu Live
April 4, 2008
March 21, 2008. 6:30 PM. My friend and I arrive at the Museum of Fine Arts, armed with $15 each and an unbreakable determination: we will get into this show. If it’s not through scalped tickets, we’ll do it through criminal activity and deception. Or we’ll strip. Or whatever.
Judging from the lengths we’d have gone to to get in, you’d think we were seeing a high-demand act like Justin Timberlake or the Spice Girls (who doesn’t love a band of moms past their glory?). But no, our targets were not nearly so famous, not nearly so sought after. We had decided to fight our way into a sold-out show featuring two bands we’d hardly even heard of ourselves: Thao Nguyen and Xiu Xiu. We did eventually manage to get in, via the scalped ticket methode — almost anticlimactic, compared to the other epic plans we’d crafted e — but if it works, it works.
This was my first time seeing a concert at the MFA, and the best word I can come up with to describe this venue is “neutral.” I felt no particular affinity for the Remis Auditorium, where the show took place, but I also didn’t find it particularly offensive, although the cherub sculptures on the wall were a bit unnerving. The Remis Auditorium is a seated venue, and for this show, it was general admissions, except for the first couple rows, for which tickets were sold separately. One of the best things about this event was the people-watching that ensued upon entering the museum. From the throes of hipsters to the pretentious older attendees who obviously had no idea what Xiu Xiu and Thao had in store for them, interesting individuals were everywhere. I’d go so far as to say they made waiting in the stand-by line worthwhile.
Thao Nguyen and her backup band, the Get Down Stay Down, opened the show. A friend of mine who was interning at the concert informed me that Thao and company had arrived about an hour earlier, having partied late into the night at a college they’d played the night before, and done a sound check that seemed much too quick. I liked what I’d heard from Thao prior to the show, but hearing this lowered my expectations significantly. Thankfully, Thao’s sound check was not indicative of her actual performance. It wasn’t perfect, but she had a unique voice and a lot of charisma that allowed her to establish a certain level of rapport with the audience, who were very receptive to her. Being terribly cute also didn’t hurt. While I wasn’t familiar with her work, I recognized a few of the songs I’d listened to in preparation for this concert (including “Fear and Convenience” and “Geography”), and they sounded fine live. I wouldn’t say I was blown away, but for an opening act, Thao Nguyen and the Get Down Stay Down were beyond adequate.
Following Thao’s set, there was a brief intermission. My friend and I, who had heard little of Xiu Xiu prior to the show, sought the answer to a seemingly simple question: what is Xiu Xiu like? What genre of music do they play? We discovered pretty quickly that they don’t fit squarely into any genre. In fact, the most common answer to our question was “weird.” According to Wikipedia, “weird” in the case of Xiu Xiu translates to “several disparate genres including punk, noise rock, ambient noise, modern classical, and folk,” a description that I find alarmingly accurate in retrospect.
Xiu Xiu’s set left me feeling strange. There’s really no other way to describe it. It had both enjoyable moments and moments that were terribly jarring (but intentionally so, it seemed). They utilized a wide variety of instruments, including one of those xylophones that everyone had when they were three. The use of such a diverse selection of instruments was unarguably cool, especially since the band’s four members were sometimes seen playing multiple instruments at once or playing very different instruments one after another. The drummer didn’t switch instruments like the other members of the band, but he was incredibly intense and played with precision.
The main issues that were problematic during this set were oddly quiet transitions between songs and a distinct sense that front man Jamie Stewart hated everyone, a theory that was arguably proven when the band did not return to the stage for an encore despite enthusiastic applause from the audience. While this was not the best way to end the show, this concert was worth the $15 I paid (although probably not much more than that). I’ll be keeping an eye on the MFA’s event schedule in the future.
The Museum of Fine Arts is located off the Museum of Fine Arts stop on the Green Line. A schedule of upcoming musical events can be found at http://www.mfa.org/calendar/sub.asp?key=12&subkey=55, where you can also purchase tickets.