Are these relationships that end amicably? J: It’s really dependent on the person. Probably the one person that I miss a lot is Cory McCulloch, who was in the band. He and I started it together, and we stopped working together in about 2005. I haven’t really talked to him since, and the end of us working together was really hard. We had toured together for a long time, and he and I weren’t getting along, but it was incredibly difficult for me because he’s somebody who I had been very, very close to for a very long time. And then—this is sort of funny, but it’s interesting also—he called me after we talked the last time. He had this habit of leaving, like, seventy-five-minute answering-machine messages, so reflexively, whenever I heard a message from him, I would just erase it and call him back, and he would just tell me what it was. This time I couldn’t figure out how to get it back, and so I have no idea how things actually ended between us. He could have been calling back to say, “Oh, I want to be friends,” or, “It’s cool—let’s work on things in some other way.” Or he could be calling me back to say, you know, “I fucking hate your guts and I wish you were dead.” I really regret not sorting that out, and I don’t have any idea how to get ahold of him now. I’m not even sure where he is.
A: You should call him

Most recently, Caralee McElroy left to join Cold Cave. Was that kind of unexpected? J: Yeah, I didn’t really see it coming. It’s pretty weird. I’m a little hesitant to go into all the details about it because it’s still fresh.

Is there anything you can share generally about why she left? J: She emailed me some reasons, but the bottom line is she left to be in a band that got signed to a bigger label than Xiu Xiu. There’s always been an aversion to commercialization and fashion in Xiu Xiu, and a hyper-excessive musical ethic. After four years of that, she wanted something else. She is welcome back anytime.

With all these people coming in and out of the band and the relationships and dynamics changing, how do you think that affects what you do? J: Well, on one hand it’s difficult to start the process over again. Each person plays differently and has different expectations. But on the other hand, that can be really exciting because it forces you to get out of a rut. It’s musically impossible to be in a rut with someone you don’t have any musical history with. I have a long history of doing things in a particular way.
A: I really admire the fact that Jamie has a lot of collaborations with a lot of different artists, because it shows that you’re trying different things and broadening your range and what’s expected of you. Some of the collaborations are kind of unexpected—like he’s working with a choreographer. It just shows that the band is constantly pushing itself to try new things, and I think that’s part of the reason why I really wanted to play with him.

How did you guys come to start working together? J: I have been friends with her for a long time, and she’s written some of the lyrics of the songs and contributed in other sort of tangential ways—does video projects and things like that. I needed someone to play with, and we get along really well.

Is there someone specifically you would love to make some music with? J: I think it would be cool to work with somebody who’s completely separate from music but would have access to some range of sounds that don’t have anything to do with music—like an anthropologist or something. It’d be amazing to do a bunch of stuff with ten million kinds of different fish sounds, you know? My stock answer is to do something with a caveman. That’s interesting.