XIU XIU - Xiu Mutha Fuckin’ Xiu: Vol.1

If, as Sartre says, being is the sum of the choices that go into defining it, then all you need to do is look at a person's record collection to understand who they are. Jamie Stewart, who for decades has made us his intrigued and terrified voyeurs, signs off on a compilation as varied as they come, showing us the roots of his obsessions, both musical and existential.

From rock'n'roll to old-school industrial, from pop to new wave, the twelve tracks lead us through a blue velvet of distorted, decayed visions, hallucinated dreams and sweet, ambiguous nostalgia; a deep breath is torn from Dennis Hopper's mask for an experience that intrigues and entertains, opening a magic eye onto the musical origins of the Xiu Xiu project.

It opens with "Psycho Killer", drowned in a percussive, metallic frenzy, steeped in a tense, danceable unease; it continues with a "Warm Leatherette" that revives its robotic pulse through minimal loops and drum machines and electronic fantasies worthy of John Foxx & The Maths, and the triptych closes with an "I Put A Spell On You" that swells into a breakneck, saxophone-fired noise-rock (a new tribute to Nina Simone following the 2013 monographic "Nina").

The pairing of "Hamburger Lady" and "In Dreams" is the most Lynchian moment of the collection - which in some ways echoes the live re-scoring of "Eraserhead" the Californian band is currently touring. The Throbbing Gristle cover is less psychedelic than the original, but more crowded and saturated with glitches, feedback and distorted voices; the unsettling spoken part delivered by Angela Seo paints a disturbing, grotesque pulp crescendo, thinned out only by the melancholy, virile romanticism of Roy Orbison; a Dean Stockwell-style reimagining, suspended in the dreamlike theatre of sequins and an open jabot in the room of a shabby motel.

The same effect applies to the pairing of "Sex Dwarf" and "Dancing On My Own"; Soft Cell get "Starfuckerized" without sacrificing their synth-pop soul (much as a Trent Reznor would pay tribute to Gary Numan), and the icy Swedish pathos of Robyn is developed into a deep, intense electro-ballad.

Tracks that stay truer to the originals include the post-punk of This Heat, with a "SPQR" that sways between industrial and new wave, the alarmed yet amused trance of "Lick Or Sum", and a dark, labyrinthine "Triple Sun" by Coil, whose obsessive undercurrents help build its grave, sinister atmosphere.

The sumptuous tribute to Daniel Johnston, perhaps the most heartfelt of all, strips "Some Things Last A Long Time" of all the suffering and marginality of the original, sacrificing some of its immediacy to embrace a different scale of pain; the intricate orchestration of strings, pianos and electronic, dub and percussive touches creates a miniature work with the flavour of distance, regret and loss.

Closing things out is the most on-the-nose track, "Cherry Bomb", which sounds to us like Floria Sigismondi's "Runaways": you'd expect sheer delirium, but what's left instead is a terrific teen movie carrying all of Kristen Stewart's nihilism.

A more relaxed work compared to the band's previous chapters, one that reveals the relief of feeling recognized in someone else's genius, understood (along with all of one's own ghosts) as if during an episode of MTV Brand New, with a moved embrace of the good old cathode-ray tube.

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14/03/2026