Imagine for a second the idea of a musical collision.
And I don't mean, you know, a nice duet where
two pop stars just sing a chorus at each other.
I mean a real collision. Right. The kind that
makes you wonder if everyone's going to make
it out of the studio in one piece. Exactly. So
you take, say, an experimental Italian rock band,
something kind of jagged, atmospheric. A little
dark. A little dark. And you smash it together
with American art pop weirdness. And then you
physically lock them in a studio in Turin, Italy,
and just see what happens. It sounds like the
setup for a really niche reality TV show. But
in music, when we talk about these collisions,
the industry loves to use that term. Supergroup.
Ah, the supergroup, yes. And that word, it brings
up a very specific image, doesn't it? You think
of massive ego stadium rock guys from the 70s
trying to recapture some magic. It's the Traveling
Wilburys model. Totally. It's often more about
the marketing event than the actual art. It's
like the Avengers, but for classic rock. Well,
today we are looking at a supergroup of a very
different kind. We're going to do a deep dive
into a project called XXL. A fitting name, I
think. Maybe not for commercial weight, but definitely
for artistic weight. And the album we're dissecting
is their 2005 debut, Chia Otistico. Now, looking
at our source material here, the credits, the
track list, the reviews, the first thing that
jumps out is, who even is XXL? It's actually
a literal equation. XXL is what you get when
you add Larson to your shoe. Just smashed together.
Yep. Larson, the Italian experimental rock band,
and Shiju, the American art pop band. They didn't
overthink the name, which I appreciate. Me too.
It's efficient. Yeah. So, okay, the mission for
this deep dive. Yeah. We've got this album, Giotistico,
recorded in 2005. It's post -rock. It's experimental.
It's got a cover of an 80s new wave hit. It's
a lot. It is a lot. And our goal here is to figure
out how this whole cross -continental experiment
worked. We're going to look at the credits, the
very strange track list, the reception, and see
if this collision was, you know, a masterpiece
or just a train wreck. Because it could go either
way. Oh, easily. Putting two experimental bands
in a room doesn't guarantee gold. Sometimes you
just get noise. So let's start with the setting.
We mentioned Italy, but the source says it was
recorded specifically at Larson's own studio
in Turin. And that detail is, it's crucial. Think
about the dynamic. If you meet on neutral ground,
like a rented studio in London, everyone's a
guest. Everyone is trying to figure out the coffee
machine. Exactly. But here, you the Americans,
they flew to Larson's home turf. So Larson has
the home field advantage. In a way, yeah. They're
comfortable. They know the room. They know how
the drums sound in that corner. It forces the
guests, Jamie Stewart and Carolee McElroy from
Juju, to adapt to the host's environment. It
definitely changes the power dynamic a bit. Absolutely.
You're not just jamming. You're entering their
world. And for this kind of music, that feeling
of being a little displaced, that can be really
valuable. Speaking of being unmoored, the timeline
here is wild to me. The notes say the album was
recorded in May of 2005. That's right. And it
was released on September 20, 2005. That is incredibly
fast. I mean, for a standard indie release, you're
talking a year. Maybe more. You've got marketing,
mixing, mastering. May to September, that's four
months. It's so rapid. It suggests a really raw,
immediate process. They didn't sit on these tapes
for a year and tinker. They just captured the
moment in Turin, packaged it up, and sent it
out on important records. Which is a great name
for a label, by the way. Sets a high bar right.
This isn't just a record, it's an important record.
But that speed, it really speaks to the genre.
This is post -rock and experimental rock. And
you don't want to over -polish that. You can't.
If you polish experimental rock too much, you
rub off all the interesting jagged edges, the
imperfections, the room noise. That's the good
stuff. So let's dig into that sound. When you
hear post -rock, you're probably thinking long
instrumentals, maybe some drones, weird time
signatures. You're on the right track. And the
source material says the album is largely instrumental.
But, and this is where it gets really interesting
for me, it's not entirely instrumental. They
rationed out the vocals to very specific tracks.
And that's such a great production choice. You
know, if every track has a singer, the voice
just becomes another instrument. It's furniture.
Right. But if it only shows up on, say, four
tracks out of nine, then it's an event. You really
pay attention. It's like a cameo in a movie.
You sit up when that character walks on screen.
Precisely. And let's look at who's singing, because
it's broken down in a really specific way. You've
got Carolee McElroy and Jamie Stewart, both from
the juju side of things. Okay, so looking at
the list, Carolee McElroy handles the first two
tracks. Pa -pa, pa -pa -pa -pa -pa. Hang on,
hang on. How many pa's was that? Let me count.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Pa -pa
-pa -pa -pa -pa -pa. Nailed it. I practiced.
So she sings on that one and also on track two,
Minnie Mouse's Stick. So she basically opens
the album. She's the first voice you hear. And
then vocally, she's done. That's when Jamie Stewart
steps in later. Right. On track four, which is
Pokey, I'm in your cheek. And then again on track
seven, Prince Charming. We absolutely have to
circle back to Prince Charming. But just sticking
with the structure, what does that tell you?
These little vocal drops in an instrumental C.
It tells me the album structure is deliberate.
This isn't just a jam session. They're telling
a story. And the human voice is used for specific
emotional punctuation. And look at the music
credits. Oh, yeah. The lyrics are mostly Jamie
Stewart, but the music itself is credited to
Yuji Larson. As one entity, no and. Exactly.
No ampersand, no comma, just one name. It implies
this total melding of the bands into a single
organism. That's a really cool detail. It's not,
here's the Larson part and here's this Yuji part.
It's just a soup. A minestrone, if we want to
stick with the Turin theme. I love a good minestrone.
And speaking of Italian food, did you catch track
four? I did. They were definitely leaning into
the location with these titles. Okay. We have
to talk about track seven, Prince Charming. Yes.
The dandy in the room. This just jumped out at
me from the notes. We're talking about an experimental
avant -garde album. It's moody. It's atmospheric.
And sitting right there is a cover of a 1981.
hit by adam and the ants it is a major curveball
and prince charming is in some obscure b -side
that was a huge new wave pop song written by
stuart goddard adamant and marco peroni it's
so theatrical and flamboyant creates this amazing
cognitive dissonance you've got this dark instrumental
texture and then bam you're dealing with the
legacy of 80s pop so why do you think a band
like this would pick that song well In experimental
music, covers are rarely just tributes. They're
more like interrogations. An interrogation. Yeah.
They take the song apart to see how it works,
or they twist it into something totally unrecognizable.
The arrangement credit is listed as Zizou Larson,
so you know they didn't just play it straight.
They deconstructed it. Totally. They probably
stripped it down to the studs. When you run a
bright, loud pop song through the filter of an
Italian post -rock band and an American art pop
band, you're probably going to end up with something
that sounds like a haunted memory of the original.
I would love to know what that actually sounds
like. Yeah. The source doesn't say, but just
the fact that it exists is amazing. It suggests
they had a sense of humor. That's a great point.
Experimental music can get a bad rap for being
too serious, you know, very dour, covering Adam
and the Ants. It suggests... they were actually
having fun in that studio. And speaking of fun,
or at least eccentricity, the rest of the track
titles are a journey. They really are. We've
got the seven paws, but we also have distorted
duck. Track five. Distorted duck. I mean, what
does that even mean? Is it a metaphor? Does it
sound like a duck? With this kind of music. from
this era, it could very well be a literal sample
of a duck that they ran through a distortion
pedal. I would not put it past them. Or it's
just a nonsense phrase that's stuck. Yeah. But
it sets a tone. It tells you, don't get comfortable.
We might throw a duck at you. And then there's
Lipstick Fair, which is the shortest track. Just
over a minute. 1 .14. A little blast. And then
there's the title track. Well, sort of. Track
three is Ciao, Ciao, Tistico. A little play on
the album title, Ciao, Tistico. Which I'm guessing
is a mashup of Ciao and something else. It seems
like a portmanteau. Ciao, the Italian greeting,
and Autistico, which is Italian for autistic.
It's a made up word. Feels like an inside joke
from the recording sessions. It sounds like Spanglish,
but for Italian. Italgush. Let's not make that
a thing. But yes, it reflects that linguistic
collision in the studio. We also mentioned that
Jamie Stewart wrote almost all the lyrics, but
the notes point out one really important exception.
Yes. Track two, Mini Mouse Eye Stick. The lyrics
for that one were written by Marco Schiavo. And
Marco Schiavo is from Larson. So here you see
the collaboration bleeding right into the songwriting.
It's not just Jamie writes the words, everyone
plays. Right. But who sings it? Carolee McElroy
from Shiju. So you have a Larson member writing
the lyrics and a Juju member singing them. That's
the definition of a true collaboration. It totally
blurs the lines. You can't point to that track
and say that's the American part or that's the
Italian part. It's just XXL. And then to cap
it all off, we get the closer. Yeah. Track nine,
Sunday. The epic. Seven minutes and six seconds.
It's the longest track on the album by a pretty
wide margin. Which is very traditional for post
-rock. You end with a long building piece that
kind of resolves all the tension. You spend 35
minutes on distorted ducks and adamant covers.
And then you give the listeners seven minutes
to just breathe. Exactly. Ending with a song
called Sunday. It has a certain feeling, doesn't
it? The end of the week. Maybe a bit of melancholy.
The Sunday scaries. It feels like the come down
after the party, a chance to digest everything
you just heard. Right. It's the period at the
end of the sentence. So we have this weird, wonderful
album from 2005 made in four months in Turin
on important records. The big question is, did
anyone actually care? What was the reception
like? Well, we have one major data point from
the source. Pitchfork Media. Ah, the gatekeepers
of 2005 indie rock. For sure. Back then, a Pitchfork
review could make or break a band's career. They
were the authority. So what did the authority
say? They gave the album a 7 .0 out of 10. 7
.0. Yeah. Okay. In Pitchfork terms, that's...
That's pretty respectable. It's what we call
the Gentleman's Seven. The Gentleman's Seven.
I like that. It basically means this is a good
record. It does what it set out to do. You should
listen to it. But maybe it didn't, you know,
change the course of music history. So a solid,
successful experiment. Exactly. Not a flop at
all. And honestly, for a project this weird,
a 7 .0 is a win. It's validation that the experiment
actually worked. And we have proof that it worked
beyond just a review score. Yeah. Because this
wasn't the end of XXL. No. And this is a really
important context. A lot of these collaborations
are just one -offs. They get together, they record,
and they go their separate ways. Or they just
get busy with their main bands. Right. But XXL
came back. The source lists their chronology.
Tratistico was the debut in 05, but they released
a follow -up album, Speakeology, in 2007. So
the chemistry was good enough that they decided
to do it all over again. It legitimized XXL as
a real band, not just a side project. It meant
that this new third identity they created actually
had more to say. I love that. It turns this album
from a weird curiosity into chapter one of a
real story. It does. It shows they're committed
to the whole thing. So let's zoom out. We've
got the who, the where, the what. Larson and
Juju, a studio in Italy, distorted ducks. Why
does this matter? Why should someone listening
right now care about this album from 2005? I
think it matters because it represents this moment
of, I don't know, real cultural openness. You
have two very different bands from two different
countries who decided that the sum could be greater
or at least stranger than the parts. It's the
idea that you don't just feature a guest, you
create a whole new thing with them. Precisely.
And it challenges the ego of the artist. To make
this work, everyone had to give up a little bit
of control. Larson had to let these Americans
into their space and mess with their sound. It's
a real lesson in collaboration. You have to be
vulnerable. You have to let the other person
mess with your stuff. And for you, as a listener,
it's a reminder that some of the most interesting
art happens in the margins. This wasn't a chart
topper. It didn't win a Grammy. It's this 40
-minute slab of weirdness that you might miss.
if you aren't looking for it it really does reward
digging a little deeper you know looking at a
source like this it's really just a stub we have
the facts yeah we know it was recorded in may
released in september we know the track lengths
down to the second you have all the metadata
but there's so much we don't know that phrase
largely instrumental it's doing so much work
what actually happens in those wordless minutes
that's the mystery and that's the beauty of it
we have The scaffolding, the dates, the names,
the track list, but the actual texture of the
sound in that room in Turin that's left for you
to fill in. We can analyze the data, but you
can't replicate the feeling of hearing distorted
duck for the first time without just pressing
play. The map is not the territory. Exactly.
We've given you the map. We've pointed out the
landmarks, but you still have to take the hike.
Keep an eye out for Adam Ant's covers. And the
Ducks. Don't forget the Ducks. Thanks for listening
to this deep dive into XXL. Go find something
weird to listen to today. Until next time. See
ya.