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**Xiu Xiu - Forget: A Beautiful Catastrophe**

When Xiu Xiu announced their dissolution in late 2017, it felt like watching a beloved but perpetually wounded animal finally succumb to its injuries. Jamie Stewart's decade-and-a-half project had always teetered on the brink of collapse, held together by sheer artistic will and an almost masochistic dedication to emotional excavation. Yet here we are, years later, and Stewart continues to resurrect the Xiu Xiu moniker like some kind of musical phoenix with a death wish, proving that some artistic visions are simply too stubborn to die.

Looking back at 2017's "Forget," it's clear this album served as both a potential swan song and a defiant middle finger to anyone who thought Xiu Xiu had lost their ability to shock and disturb. If anything, "Forget" stands as one of their most cohesive statements – a paradox for a band built on beautiful incoherence.

The album emerged from a period of intense personal upheaval for Stewart, following the death of his father and his own struggles with mental health. But rather than retreat into the kind of precious indie introspection that lesser artists might indulge in, Stewart channeled his grief into something far more unsettling and ultimately more honest. "Forget" doesn't just process trauma; it weaponizes it, turning pain into a blunt instrument that beats listeners into submission before offering moments of unexpected tenderness.

Musically, "Forget" finds Xiu Xiu at their most disciplined, which for this project means the chaos feels intentional rather than accidental. The album exists in that familiar Xiu Xiu space where experimental electronic music meets damaged folk songs, but here the juxtapositions feel less jarring and more purposeful. Stewart's vocals remain as unhinged as ever – part wounded animal, part operatic diva, part broken child – but they're supported by some of the most sophisticated arrangements in the band's catalog.

The opening track "Wondering" sets the tone with its queasy electronic pulse and Stewart's falsetto floating over what sounds like a drum machine having an anxiety attack. It's quintessential Xiu Xiu: beautiful, ugly, and impossible to ignore. But it's "Forget" itself that serves as the album's emotional centerpiece, a seven-minute odyssey through grief that builds from whispered confessions to full-throated wailing. The song shouldn't work – its structure is too fractured, its emotional register too extreme – but it succeeds precisely because it refuses to make sense of senseless loss.

"Get Up" offers perhaps the album's most accessible moment, if anything on a Xiu Xiu album can be called accessible. Built around a hypnotic synth loop and featuring some of Stewart's most restrained vocals, it's the closest thing to a pop song here, though it's pop music as filtered through a fever dream. Meanwhile, "Jenny GoGo" strips everything down to just voice and piano, creating space for Stewart to deliver one of his most devastating performances over the album's most deceptively simple arrangement.

The album's secret weapon might be "Always," a collaboration with Mitski that finds both artists operating in their respective comfort zones while pushing each other toward new territory. Mitski's more grounded vocal approach provides a counterweight to Stewart's theatrical extremes, creating a dialogue between two very different approaches to articulating pain.

What makes "Forget" so compelling is how it functions as both a culmination and a distillation of everything Xiu Xiu had been building toward. The album contains all the elements that made the project essential – the fearless emotional honesty, the willingness to make listeners uncomfortable, the refusal to separate beauty from ugliness – but presented with a clarity and focus that had sometimes been missing from earlier releases.

In the context of Xiu Xiu's legacy, "Forget" stands as proof that experimental music doesn't have to sacrifice emotional directness for artistic credibility. Stewart has always been unafraid to be vulnerable to the point of embarrassment, but here that vulnerability feels earned rather than performed. The album doesn't just document personal crisis; it transforms that crisis into something approaching catharsis.

Whether "Forget" represents an ending or a new beginning for Xiu Xiu remains to be seen, but as a statement of artistic purpose, it's uncompromising and unforgettable. In a musical landscape increasingly dominated by safe choices and calculated risks, Xiu Xiu continues to offer