CD Reviews

Xiu Xiu

Women as Lovers | Kill Rock Stars

By MIKAEL WOOD | March 18, 2008

3.0 Stars

Jamie Stewart, the only founding member left in this creepy Oakland-based avant-rock outfit, has been releasing recordings at such a steady clip since 2002 that you might expect him to have run out of new ways to provoke discomfort. Yet Xiu Xiu’s sixth studio full-length is no less unsettling than any of their previous efforts. Over undulating soundscapes full of off-kilter percussion, wheezing synthesizers, and the occasional blast of brass, Stewart sings about war and sex and prescription drugs in an exaggerated whisper that makes it seem he’s divulging the deepest of secrets — which he might well be, if you could only make sense of the lyrics. Women As Lovers’ appealingly perverse centerpiece is a skronky cover of Queen and David Bowie’s “Under Pressure” that has Stewart duetting with Swans mastermind Michael Gira; it’s appealing because it rocks and perverse because it’s far from the weirdest thing here.

Xiu Xiu + Thao Nguyen + The Get Down Stay Down | Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Avenue, Boston | March 21 | 617. 369.3306

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Topics: CD Reviews , Michael Gira , Thao Nguyen , David Bowie , More

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ARTICLES BY MIKAEL WOOD

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