Xiu Xiu
Women as Lovers

There's something perverse in Jamie Stewart's gaze that compels you, every time, to plunge into his personal oblivion of domestic violence, slaps under the mistletoe, cats, and trash. There's something perversely soothing in his voice, one of the most splendid male voices I have ever had the chance to hear, so broken, so dark, yet also conciliatory. There's something perverse in his music, which embodies all possible feelings for a human being.
And don't call it no-wave, new-wave, or anything else: because his music is something undefinable, which must be listened to with the heart, before the mind.

And here we are. "Women As Lovers," the most quirky and bursting with energy and originality work ever produced with his Xiu Xiu, the most heterogeneous and puerile, yet also complex and overflowing with poetry. An album that opens with an unforgettable anthem like "I Do What I Want When I Want", pure pop anarchy beneath those "turuturutrutu!" and the resonating saxophone, and then immediately throws you into the hellish meshes of an indefinable yet poignant "In Lust You Can Hear The Axe Fall", a tour de force of screams and white noise, seemingly chaotic, yet unimaginably emotional/emotionally gripping. Stuff that caresses your face with one hand and digs into your guts with the other.

And already you find yourself immersed in the waters of Lethe, in the mood of an album that seems to have emerged from a buried and unearthed memory chest. A record that, with the oblique acoustics of a splendid "F.T.W.", even manages to move your soul gently but is also capable of pointing a gun at your temple with the almost-hardcore of an anthem (in the true sense of the word) like "White Nerd": abstract noise, screams launched into the penumbra, and a chorus that shoots into the gut.
And when you start to find your bearings, there comes, unexpectedly, a cover of "Under Pressure", initially faithful and then violated in its unconscious, throwing you into the gentle mourning dances of "Black Keyboard" and the unattainable oblivions of a ballad like "Master Of The Bump", up to the rhythmic dark prayer of "The Leash", with almost rap cadences, almost an abyss, almost soul.

There are also alternate choruses of a violent "You Are Pregnant, You Are Dead", where voices, almost whispered, fight against the violent resonation of the drums, but above all, there's a devastating "Child At Arms", the album's peak, starting as a potential anthem then unravelling to reclaim its initial grime, in a scream that shatters and encompasses everything. It's pain, it's joy, euphoria, metaphysics. It's emotion. 

There's something perversely fascinating in this combination of sensations and wonders, of childish amazements and communion garments stained with blood. There's something fascinating in these oblique refrains, in these cosmic dissonances. 

There's all the carnal poetry of Jamie Stewart.
And it's once again a great, grand album.  

And with my soul broken in two, I lock myself in my closet, watching the ants.