Xiu Xiu, Jamie Stewart’s passive-aggressive pop outfit, has long thrived on raw transitions from whispers to shrieks, from clean guitar tones to squeals of errant synth, from melody to melodrama. His work is a theater of contrasts that has spellbound hipsters, noizeniks, and emo kids for nearly a decade. The group played for a sweaty throng at Garfield Artworks a couple weeks ago as part of their annual autumn tour. Cloistered in the back of the jam-packed gallery, they carved out a concise medley of recent tracks with their collection of gongs, drums, keyboards, and whistles.

Xiu Xiu’s performances show that violence is the obverse side of intimacy, or even its precondition. In Stewart’s world, where overt emotions emanate from closeted tragedies, ironies are mourned, not smirked at. Were it not for his mad lyrical finesse, this whole messy Xiu Xiu affair would simply be over the top. But Stewart’s rage, remorse, and libido show themselves in palpable images that create narratives all by themselves: a glass heart clinking, a little girl with her head shot open, a deformed penis.

These images embody the tenderness and fury of Xiu Xiu with more efficacy than even Stewart’s on-stage histrionics. In fact, his stories enable his spectacle. In art, certainly, “nothing exists in itself”; it’s up to the writer to make real the contrasts that ultimately burn us to the ground or freeze us to death. Stewart does this with words, and takes it a step further, showing with his delivery that even our contrasts (male versus female, love versus hate, noise versus music) are fabrications, and wicked ones at that.

Noise groups like Yellow Swans and Prurient were well chosen as the preface to Xiu Xiu’s act. When plugged into a thicket of tabletop electronics, a guitar no longer acts like a guitar. In the hands of such groups, a plucked string will unleash a magma-bath of distortion for a half-minute after it’s been touched. It enacts sonic violence that is as captivating as it is impossible to trace. When Xiu Xiu take the stage, they give that dynamic a bitter heart, a nostalgic mind, and abused genitals. In their songs, the buried abjection of the past blossoms wretchedly in the present. Deceptive violence lurks in the band’s own name. One expects aural clutter from the articulation of the two capital “X”s in “Xiu Xiu,” but the name, when spoken, dissipates in the gentlest doubled hush: “shoo, shoo.”

Often, shows are emotional experiences. People say that the shows have “changed their lives forever” or talk about the euphoria they felt at the climax of a set, feeling “washed” or “cleaned” by the band channeling energy into sound and somehow through that affecting the audience’s hearts and minds. But how often are shows emotional experiences for the band?

A friend of mine told me about the Silver Jews show last week. I wasn’t there, but according to her it was essentially witnessing a messy breakup on stage. As the band fractured and the members scowled, the songs got commensurately more intense, and the audience was held in thrall by the drama of the situation. This sort of experience, she said, made the show really memorable and probably improved its emotional effectiveness, but it also made the show uncomfortable and awkward for those attending.

This reminded me of when I saw the Brothers Unconnected over the summer. Alan and Richard Bishop, two-thirds of the Sun City Girls, did a “memorial tour” for the other third, their recently deceased drummer, Charles Gocher. If something’s a “memorial tour” then obviously it was going to be emotional, but I wasn’t really prepared for what happened.

The night started off with a showing of Gocher’s experimental films, a significant side hobby of his. These were bizarre, lots of them featuring multiple Gochers superimposed on one another via pointing cameras at TVs.

Many of Gocher’s avant-garde poems were set to music played by the Brothers Unconnected, and these were often extremely vulgar, sufficiently so that I cannot reproduce them here. The Bishops yelled them, angry and sneering, between more subdued SCG songs, and often I was genuinely uncomfortable with the images they painted and the intensity with which they sang, but I was also extremely intrigued. The crowd seemed alternately amused and frightened, but its attention absolutely never wavered. All eyes were always fixed on the stage.

After the show, I had no idea whether or not I liked it but I knew that I would absolutely not forget it and I was glad I went. I’m still not totally sure, months later, whether I had fun at all. Every time I talk about it with a friend, though, I lean toward yes. It was so raw and uncomfortable that it was tough to take, but isn’t that what art is about?

In the surrealist worlds that Silver Jews frontman David Berman coaxes us into entering, it smells like beer most of the time, but then there’s a light shower and we’re rewarded with a grandiose view of Virginia, fields and fences all bathed in yellow light. We think of the things in water and the things in the sky. We recall machines and transportation. This is what he gives us. This is what we are invited to receive.

And when we look at David Berman, we can see all those things inside him, and it all just makes sense. In a recent interview for Pitchfork TV, Berman reads “Top 10 Redneck Moments,” and he shows us what we want from him: attention to oversights, cynicism, and quickness. He plays a few songs in front of the camera, balancing fleeting moments of “hamming it up” with a seeming discomfort about the whole thing. And watching these things, I begin to feel like Berman is trying to get at something he didn’t care as much about before.

The evidence becomes clear when you open up the jewel case for their release from early summer, Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea, which came with an insert of “silver chords” and a booklet of lyrics with chord progressions. So maybe it’s the sobriety, or the way of getting older, but David Berman wants to make music for everyone to listen to. It’s not a novel concept, but there’s something that seems sincere and important about Berman’s mission. There’s something riding on this, and I can’t put my finger on it.

Then I listen to the last part of the interview, and he says it, and I can’t believe that he’s saying it. He’s trying to speak to the young people because there are things he knows that are important. That will help us. Because there is some crisis up the road, and he sees it coming. “I will be your general if you want to be my privates. But first we have to start now, before the crisis.” And we realize that this album is no longer a gift of strange worlds. It is his token, his treaty, and his bid for our trust. And I’m caught between degrees of disillusionment in the world, and my question over his sincerity is only a passing thought, because if there’s anyone I would like to follow, I think I would like to follow David Berman, wherever that would go.