Caught Live: Xiu Xiu + Former Ghosts + Cixous Ghost @ The Grand Social, Dublin

A rather fitting lineup for the Hallowe’en weekend, this Skinny Wolves-curated affair forms part of the Darklight 2010 Festival. It’s the second Irish show for Xiu Xiu this year, following their Whelans gig back in February.

Dublin’s Cixous Ghost kick things off, and while the delayed start time means that Emily Aoibheann and co. are cut short, what we do hear leaves us eager for more. Theirs is a dark, dubby sound, overlaid with eerie, echoing vocals. There’s a real voodoo-esque feel to it in fact, and it’s arguably more unsettling than either act that follows.

Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart joins Freddie Ruppert (aka Former Ghosts) onstage for the early part of his set, contributing strangled guitar as the singer provides dramatic percussion. It’s a striking start, but as soon as Stewart leaves the stage Ruppert seems ill-at-ease. There’s certainly no shortage of effort – on the contrary, Ruppert is giving it as much as he can, given that he’s essentially accompanying himself – and there’s not much wrong with the music either, but the songsmith is clearly on edge, at one point even wishing aloud that his set could end quicker. A blog post soon after the gig will shed some light on his concerns – particularly his uncertainty about the potency of a one-man set-up, or at least the reaction to a one-man set-up from a rock-oriented crowd. With Ireland unlucky to miss out on the presence of Zola Jesus (she joins the tour in the UK), and Stewart reluctant to become an integral part of the Former Ghosts live act, it seems that there’s more weighing on the young man’s shoulders than he’d possibly bargained for. Whatever his reservations, the set tonight is still rather impressive. ‘Taurean Nature’ and the sweeping  ‘New Orleans’, both from upcoming album New Love, stand out, while Fleurs’ ‘Us and Now’ is met with the warmest welcome; it’s a sleek, emotive, goth-tinged sound that we’re treated to.

As Jamie Stewart and partner-in-crime Angela Seo enter the fray for Xiu Xiu’s set, they take part in a kind of bizarre (but pretty cool) secret handshake/chant type interaction; it’s the precursor to a typically intense performance. There are a few numbers from current album Dear God, I Hate Myself, including the creepily unsettling ‘Hyunhye’s Theme’ and the deceptively cheery-sounding ‘Chocolate Makes You Happy’. Stewart is in fine form, not so much delivering the songs as acting them out. ‘Fabulous Muscles’ and the excellent ‘Muppet Face’ are high-points, but as a whole their set never quite takes off. The blame for this may not necessarily lie entirely with the band: there’s a disappointing lack of atmosphere in The Grand Social in general tonight. Strange, given that all three acts are so suited to the season, but you’ll have that sometimes I suppose.