Jamie Stewart wants to pummel you in the face. Don’t take it personally, it’s simply the best way to channel the emotional pressure building up inside. The good news is a good beating never sounded so good. The latest from Xiu Xiu, Stewart’s musical outlet which also includes current bandmates Angela Seo and Ches Smith, despairs in all the right ways, taking Stewart’s Morrissey infatuation to new levels and darkening every room it inhabits.

Dear God, I Hate Myself is Xiu Xiu’s new disc and the art rock outfit might have outdone themselves – a difficult statement after the brilliant vulnerability and questioning found on 2008′s Women as Lovers. Why this penchant for the morose? Why the constant rotation of supporting members? Stewart’s a lone gunman, even when he doesn’t want to be, but if it keeps the music at this level, we suggest no changes are necessary.

SSv: I know you’ve been releasing a lot of Limited Edition types of things with music and even the shirts you recently put out. Is that what you’re learning as far as having to navigate the music industry today to stay afloat?

Jamie: Oh, that’s a good question. That’s certainly not the motivation for it. However, I will say that idea of doing Limited Edition sorts of things came from others that I know who are doing those things because the industry has changed. I don’t think it would have occurred to me had I not known other people who were doing it, but that’s not my motivation. [Laughs] Part of it, and this is the unromantic side, is that any Limited Edition stuff we’re making ourselves, I want to make sure my life not some Xiu Xiu cottage factory where my life is making endless things. If I say I am making 21 of something, then I’m only going to make that many in an evening or something rather than spending my entire life on it.

Also, I can’t imagine anybody taking the time to get something like that unless they had a long-term interest in the band, of which there really aren’t that many people. [Laughs] If I make a small number of something, that’s probably because there’s only that many people who would buy an album like that. If I said I’m making 1,000, I’d only sell 21 anyway. [Laughs] But away from that side, it’s also interesting to know that only a certain number of something exists in the world.

SSv: I just didn’t know if you were a collector personality yourself and interested in those kinds of endeavors.

Jamie: I listen to music a lot, but I’m not a collector or anything like that. But I know some people are – actually, a lot of people are. It’s just more satisfying for me to be on the production end of that, rather than the receiving end.

SSv: Have you noticed that helps the fan base in some ways to feel they’re a part of something more meaningful?

Jamie: Well, it doesn’t help the fan base grow at all. The people who are already “fans” would be interested in something like that, but it doesn’t generate new fans. People who like Xiu Xiu a lot receives something interesting. It’s a way for us to give back to some people who’ve been extremely supportive for a long time, rather than just the normal retail available.

SSv: I want to get to the new album, but first about the rotating cast of characters. As the lone long-standing member, can you speak to the pros and cons of that?

Jamie: Frankly, I find it annoying. [Laughs] I’ve wanted to be a regular band since we’ve started. I have no idea why, but it’s just really difficult to maintain that. I mean, there have been certain eras of the band where the people have been consistent for a couple of years, but in the eight years of the band, there have had to have been several line-ups. [Pause] Yeah, we’re on the seventh line-up in eight years. [Laughs] I’ve never counted.

It may seem predetermined, but people just up and leave. Sometimes they get fired. They end up finding other things in their lives that they’d rather be doing. It’s a pain in the ass actually. It’s cool to get to play with someone for a couple years because you really get to know them and understand how they play and you sound better. When you bring someone in, there’s a fairly steep learning curve for both parties.

It’s not that it hasn’t been interesting playing with so many people. I’ve certainly appreciated having the opportunity to do that. Everyone who has ever played in the band has been very, very talented and I feel very lucky to have gotten to play with them. But it is a big fuckin’ pain in the ass.

SSv: Some bands mention that it takes a few albums to even learn how to really play together. Do you ever wonder where you’d be now with a secure line-up?

Jamie: Well, considering some of the people who left the band, I’d have a tremendous amount of heartache. [Laughs] I’ve never really thought about it. If I could construct a dream of a consistent line-up that would go across all eras of people who’d been in in the band, I could come up with that. But there hasn’t been one perfect line-up at any point. Each one had an aspect or two that they really excelled at and other things they were weaker at. That’s not such a bad thing, really.

SSv: Does it inject a sense of freshness into the band when some of these things happen?

Jamie: Absolutely, that’s definitely a pro. Anybody who’s played has been someone I knew personally before and I brought them in because I thought that they were good, or I was already a fan of the bands they’d played in. I don’t want to make it seem that it totally sucks and ruins my day or anything like that. Having a fresh perspective is always good and adds a level of creativity to what we’d try to do.

SSv: To get to Dear God, I Hate Myself, the album’s quite different than Women as Lovers–

Jamie: Not that I wanted it to sound this way, but I guess the pace sort of reflects this. But the new Morrissey record is very compact, a very tight fit. The last record was the longest record that we had done. It had the most songs. We were purposely trying with Women as Lovers to experiment with a longer form we’d never done before. So it was an attempt to do just the opposite with this record. We were just trying to make something that you could listen to very, very quickly in a very, very short setting that is pummeling you the entire time that you were listening to it, rather than something you could listen to in sections or that had various musical sections to it.

Thematically, I didn’t have any idea how I wanted it to be. I don’t think it’s a good idea to think about things too hard before you go in to record. Music will generally control you rather that you control the music, so it’s usually a good idea to listen to the music rather than force the music into what you want it to be.

SSv: Are you a longtime Morrissey fan?

Jamie: Oh, oh, yeah. My favorite. My number one favorite. It’s an easy answer for me. Ever since I was a teenager, it’s never failed me.

SSv: Did you come out the studio proud of accomplishing that effort? Did you feel you got what you wanted?

Jamie: I don’t know if I ever think about things that way. With every record, we just put as much of our hearts into making it as we can. We put as much care into making a record as we can at the time. That record is to be the document of the time in which it was made, so we try to do the absolute best that we can. We would not have put it out if we hadn’t done that. I don’t know if it’s good necessarily, but I know we did our best in making it. So in that respect, I’m proud of it.

I mean, I don’t listen to the records like I listen to other people’s records. It’s impossible to enjoy listening to them because there’s no way to be objective about it. You know every minutiae of every detail that went into it. It’s not like you’re listening to real music because you’re just too close to it.

SSv: With songs like “Hyunhye’s Theme” and the title track, the video of “Dear God” getting the attention, but even down to the black and white photo, the album is so emotionally compelling beginning to end. You then reference Morrissey here and wanting to pummel the listener. Is that just a natural proclivity for you to be that emotionally barren and then want to create art the same way?

Jamie: Yeah, for sure. Yes. It’s probably the other way around though. It’s not so much that I’m this emotionally barren and then feel the need to turn it into art. Emotionally, I could hardly deal with existing day to day and I’ve luckily found art as a way to manage that much extreme feeling. I would quite certainly be totally lost without it.

SSv: What does that mean? Can you explain that more?

Jamie: I’m fucking bonkers. [Laughs] I’ve had a lot of shitty things happen to me, and even if I didn’t have shitty things happen, the way that God made my brain is wired to a hyper-excessive way of feeling things and I need a place to put all of that negative energy and emotion. I could become a meth addict or try to be in a band. I’m very, very, very fortunate to come across music at the exact time that I needed it. I could turn all of that negative energy into something rather than let it depress me all the time.

SSv: What was that moment that the music found you?

Jamie: Oh, let’s see. I’d played in bands since I was a teenager, but it was never a serious thing. My dad was in the music business and so my mom never wanted me to get serious about it. I think she’d seen what it can do to people — which it can be really, really rough on people. So my mom really discouraged me from pursuing it. She wanted me to go to college. I think that’s typical that if your parents didn’t go to college, then they really, really want you to go to college.

So I’d played, but it wasn’t the main focus of my life. As time went on, I started unravelling more and more and was playing in bands that weren’t going anywhere. Right at the time — and this is a chicken and egg thing — when I felt a psychological shift going on, I decided to get really serious about music and go for broke and stop pretending that it’s not what I wanted to do. That’s when we started Xiu Xiu and those things coincided.

*Photos by Hyu Ngo.