For almost ten years now, Xiu Xiu has been leading the way for dramatic D.I.Y. weirdo noisemakers everywhere, baring their tortured souls on countless albums and endless tours. While the band has featured all sorts of lineups and configurations, founder and front man Jamie Stewart has been the consistent driving force behind the emotional assault. But despite his figurehead status, Stewart insists that Xiu Xiu is a collaborative process through and through. A natural born collaborator, Stewart has at least two side projects going right now and is planning his foray into the world of contemporary choreography. As if that weren’t enough, he set up a highly limited subscription service in early 2009 for which he wrote and recorded a monthly album of ambient compositions for a full year, and in May, longtime Xiu Xiu mainstay Caralee McElroy abruptly left the band.

Somehow, in the middle of all this, Stewart—with new member Angela Seo, along with Ches Smith and Deerhoof’s Greg Saunier and John Dieterich—recorded the material for a new Xiu Xiu album to be released on February 23 under the title Dear God, I Hate Myself. Recently decamped to Durham, North Carolina, Stewart and Seo have been keeping a low profile, jamming out on a Nintendo DS and gearing up for another hectic tour. Just after the New Year, I found myself huddled in a frigid basement having my first Skype conversation with Jamie and Angela as we talked about their incomparable brand of toe-tapping heartbreak.

Tell me about the title of the new record, Dear God, I Hate Myself. Is it a serious title or is it more tongue in cheek? Jamie Stewart: Oh, I wish it was tongue in cheek. Let me think of how I can say this cogently. Not unlike most people, I struggle with being able to deal with myself. And there was a particular period relatively recently where things were really, really rough, and I found myself praying that exact line and not knowing how to deal with it all. I was feeling so cripplingly overwhelmed with feelings of self-loathing, and just feeling that way at all is super complicated for me, because kind of privately, I’m very religious. There’s this complicated thing of feeling really guilty about hating myself, but at the same time, occasionally being able to get through that through some sort of connection to a greater universal positive force or whatever. Sorry to sound like a fucking hippie.

I just didn’t know if you were being funny—like, let’s see how far can I take this. J: In a more incredibly overblown melodramatic sort of emotionality it’s funny, but it’s also true in the same sort of way.

Do you feel like you have the freedom to make music when you want to make music, tour when you want to tour? J: Yeah, absolutely. I feel extraordinarily lucky to be in that position. It’s been my goal since I was a kid, and luckily we’re on a label that doesn’t pressure us to do anything one way or the other. I’ve got a friend, who I shall not mention, who’s on a label that I shall not mention, who has to do all manner of absurd things, and they’re not really any bigger a band than we are. I’m just really surprised that a sort of midsize to smallish band has to do humiliating sorts of things and write records to appease their label. Really, we don’t have to do any of that shit because Kill Rock Stars is great.
Angela Seo: I’ve seen Jamie work, and he’s a workaholic. He says he’s free to do what he wants, but he’s at it all the time, morning to night. I mean, he may get to do the music he wants, but he may not always be free to do other stuff. He can’t take, like, a two-year break from music and go off vacationing.

In some ways, I feel like Xiu Xiu is like an ultimate collaboration. For the entire time you’ve been making music, it’s been a rotating cast of characters.
J: Yeah, a lot of people have been involved.

Why do you think it has happened like that, looking back on it? J: Well, I guess there’s sort of two columns of people who’ve collaborated: There have been people who’ve been members of the band, of which there’s been a lot, and then there have been people who have not been members of the band but who’ve played on the record, or who we’ve done specific collaboration records with. The latter column have just been people that I was a fan of, and I thought it would be rewarding and particularly interesting to work with them. And on the other side, each person has come and gone for a variety of reasons. I guess the common denominator would be that no one can stand me or something like that, but in the beginning people were in school or had jobs, and we weren’t doing a lot. I mean, I’m certainly not making enough money for people not to go to school or have jobs. The last lineup had actually been relatively steady for the last four years. It’s only been in the last few months that things have changed pretty radically.