Xiu Xiu
Angel Guts: Red Classroom

THE REVIEW

Okay, so take my words with a grain of salt.

Out there, you won't find many nice words about the new work by Xiu Xiu. It's reached that ugly point where an artist or group is judged negatively for everything that comes from their hands. An event that, incredibly, happens to everyone, without exception: the winds have changed, and you're no longer cool, you're no longer riding the wave, and if you change, you're no longer like before, whereas if you stay true to your style, you become repetitive and boring.

So, again: read my review, but temper its enthusiasm a bit. Because, as you know, Xiu Xiu is my favorite band. And as such, it may appear that my opinion on the album (which I've listened to repeatedly) might seem (or actually be) biased. But, after all, we all regard our idols as friends and end up enjoying even their less successful works.

Alright. Let me just say that "Angel Guts: Red Classroom" despite the general discontent, captivated me from the very first listen. Much more than what happened with the previous "Always," which took more listens to fully understand and which I still love. That was a car album, really easy with its crooked choruses, here and there interspersed with moments of delirium just to throw you off track (the masterpieces "I Luv Abortion" and "Black Drum Machine") or unexpected tear-jerking ballads (the beautiful "The Oldness").

Instead, "Angel Guts" already presented well from the start: after the jazz detour of "Nina" here it is, a return-to-the-roots album (as Stewart said) bearing the title of a pinku eiga by Takashi Ishii, with a lead single ("Stupid In The Dark") straight out of a massacre disco.

Not a true return to the roots, but a new evolution. A new path to embark on that abandons pop, transforming into pure, animalistic expression.
Finally, little Jamie is back to staging an irreversible nervous collapse, which is no longer that whispered depression of a leprosy patient that was, essentially, the immortal (my all-time favorite album) "A Promise," but a concentrate of neuroses, anger, screams, and abrasions caused by raped analog synths thrown into the abyss.

Overlooking the flimsy intro ("Angel Guts") and outro ("Red Classroom"), all twelve tracks of the album maintain very high levels. Songs that once again throw you into the nets of uncontrolled perversion and the unrelenting depression of the Californian singer-songwriter's early works and his trusty new companion Angela Seo (with him since "Dear God, I Hate Myself"). Twelve psychodramas of violence and darkness, where only "Stupid In The Dark" has something of an earworm and easy-listening, almost an anthem for the downtrodden awaiting a revolution that isn't coming.

The truce is dictated by two of the album's peaks: the first is the wonderful love song "New Life Immigration" with that trembling whisper "We Don't Need to live to love"- My God, I won't even start to tell you about the tears that come listening to it: I feel like one of those women who somewhere in the world get paid to cry at the funerals of strangers-. The second is "Botanica De Los Angeles", another disorienting ballad with that dolorous march between tenderness and desperation: "But that pistol is raised in your lips. Fill it with kisses". Say what you want: I'm melting into the void.

And I'm feeling good. And I'm feeling bad.
And I'd like to cry, scream, tear apart this horizon that's crashing in front of me.
That I can no longer stand the word "Spring". 
I'm locking myself in your winter.

And sorry if I digress, but you know that my reviews are always emotionally unstable, dictated by a language that I can't even explain. So I get lost in the reasoning destroyed by the infernos of an "A Knife In The Sun" where Jamie's growl coincides with the fury of a synth mauled by the apocalypse. I disintegrate in the face of that massacre of innocence which is the extraordinary "Cynthia's Unisex": somewhere there's the ghost of Alan Vega swimming in those "NONONONONONONONONONO!" traversing the restless oceans between the temples of a square. 
The journey is non-linear, but extremely homogeneous: thus, on one side we have the punk scratches of "Lawrence Liquors" and on the other the pulsating minimal synth of "Black Dick", an orgasm echoing over warm spasms of flesh. 

I'm losing control.
Here I am in the hyperuranium watching you from above.

I have in my head the slit-wrist pop of "Adult Friends", the heart attacks of "The Silver Platter", the feverish "Archie Fades" and the Pandora's box uncovered by the title "Bitter Melon".

Here it is, finally, that shattered psychology returns, clothed in kicks of darkness, with heavy, deconstructed, uncontrollable, schizophrenic rhythms.
I, here, with these tracks embedded in my eardrums, pound my fists on the ground.

And if I were truly sincere, I would have written this review in a stream of consciousness, skipping the first informative paragraph and full of spelling errors, temporal shifts, devoid of punctuation. If it were a movie, I'd do it with continuous camera glances and field crossings.

Among the albums of the year right away.

HELLO SADNESS.
HELLO MENTAL BREAKDOWN.