#5
Clowne Towne – Xiu Xiu
Album: Fabulous Muscles
Year: 2004
If ever there was a song deserving of the adjective “transcendent,” it is surely this one, somewhat paradoxically the sad tale of a collection of folks who have done anything but rise above. Our hero, a “true, ridiculous dumb ass,” experiences loss, disappointment and betrayal at the hands of his lover (an alcoholic mess), his father (disillusioned and angry) and his brother (an emotionally abusive sociopath). They occupy a world where dreams serve only as bitter contrast to an oppressive reality.
Sounds like more fun than a barrel of monkeys, no? But one listen will shut down any doubts about the worthwhile nature of this song. For a Xiu Xiu track, it’s very produced (see the title track from this album, which consists of breathy moaning about sex and death over barely strummed acoustic guitar, for a comparison). It bubbles into being with a swooping synth line that telescopes under brightly played acoustic guitar to give the effect of what I’m sure hang gliding – the giddy sensation of the ground far below one’s feet – must be like. This soaring effect is fleshed out by a brutal, staccato string part and punchy industrial echoes and the sound is textured so perfectly, you can practically feel the instruments that created it, so clear are the vibrations it makes in the air.
Nothing says brilliant avant-rock quite like evolutionarily disadvantaged water birds
All this and then the added distinction of singer Jamie Stewart dropping the line “Clowne Town: a flock of coots,” in the second chorus. This line never fails to make me smile as coot is about the funniest word I can think of that sounds like (but isn’t) slang for female genitalia. The coot, a member of the family Rallidae, is one of the world’s few waterfowl without webbed feet. The tragi-comedic nature of the coot’s predicament is, to me, the clearest distillation of “Clowne Towne”‘s genius. I mean, just look at this little guy!
