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Rating:
The music of Xiu Xiu is a flow of imperceptible feelings, a massacre of a simple pop song, fragmented, dissected, torn to pieces, and fed to the listener through an agonizing melody.
As can be inferred from the album's title, the "repentant" Jamie Stewart, accompanied by the new keyboardist Angela Seo, who replaces Caralee McElroy (now with Cold Cave), seems to want to arrange some pieces of his sonic mosaic, producing tracks that are more predictable and defined, unexpectedly very catchy, but not for this deprived of inspiration, "Gray Death" and "Chocolate Makes You Happy", songs with the inevitable Post-Punk flair, which can be easily hummed and best represent the intent of this latest musical endeavor produced by Kill Rock Stars.
The experimental sounds are still present in several parts, even if certainly rendered clearer compared to past works, in "Secret Motel", where the hypnotic and cerebral Synth serves as a backdrop to Stewart's melancholic singing, and in the relentless keyboards and percussion of "Apple For a Brain". The lyrics of "Impossible Feeling", instead, seem like a sort of pessimistic poetry of Robert Smith's style, as indeed Cure are often cited as an influence for the group, much more in the lyrics and relatively in the vocal parts than in the sounds. "Cumberland Gap" is a sort of country deliberately inserted in an inopportune way.
An album that will leave old-time fans stunned, accustomed to more pronounced experimentalism, but which also represents a simpler and equally engaging approach to their art. For me, it is another splendid album.
I write this review at the tail end of the last day of 2010, listening to this album in the background, and an unmissable point of continuity for the Californian combo occurs to me while observing the artwork: once again, it is awful.
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