Xiu Xiu: "Chocolate Makes You Happy"

Xiu Xiu appears to be inching closer to an essential Xiu-ness—not, perhaps, towards their best songs, which always seem to be outliers of some kind, but at least towards a unified aesthetic. The faux-industrial whapping is getting peppier and poppier, the electronic swells and tings nudging closer to harmonious arrangements, but Jamie Stewart is still the poet laureate of the histrionically suicidal and, really, it was only a matter of time before Xiu Xiu called an album Dear God, I Hate Myself.

“Chocolate Makes You Happy” manages to split the difference, actually trying to fit the mood of the title before predictably dive-bombing into binging, purging, and “whoreishness.” But on top of the visceral eating-disorder narrative is safe, reassuring momentum that’s been hinted at for a while in gems like 2008’s cover of “Under Pressure.” The “incredibly young, incredibly filthy” dilemma is given a contextual lightness from the shimmying backup vocals and panning keyboards. All the whirring clangs in the world can’t hide the strings and “ha-ha-ha-ha” coda, plus this is no “I Luv The Valley OH!”-type grooving primal yell that used to give Xiu Xiu albums their highlights.

While Xiu Xiu albums are no longer mostly ambience, noise, and whispering, punctuated by dark rays of hope and associated grating somesuch, they’re busier, unable to rely on the intense dynamics of older, sparser arrangements. Here there’s a kind of pleasure being found in pop for pop’s sake, a new way to catharsis, not in rending screams but in concision and straightforwardness. Yes, Jamie, I believe you hate yourself.