Xiu Xiu - Xiu Mutha Fuckin' Xiu: Vol. 1
published:
I usually don't love cover albums.
Covers can be fun and all. Love me a live cover, especially an unexpected one. The feeling of a good band doing karaoke out of nowhere or something.
Recorded covers for like a tribute album or just a cover album like this, I find it's a trap. Either you play things too straight, and then it's boring like that shot-for-shot remake of Psycho that time forgot. Or you put a real weird and creative spin on things, and then I'm all snotty and unfair, mentally saying "well this isn't as good."
As far as these things go though, this is a pretty good one! And it's like a perfect distillation of Xiu Xiu. A bunch of catchy numbers. Some compelling sicko shit. And some downright unlistenable freak shows.
And it did its job of spurring me on to look up some originals. It reminded me that Dancing on My Own really was and is a banger. It made me laugh because there's a cover of Some Things Last a Long Time which I swear to god is the most covered song I've ever heard, like this is the 90s indie rock kid equivalent to All Along The Watchtower or something. I learn about this haunting track from an influential industrial band I'd never heard of. And then there's the offputting unlistenable stuff, which it turns out you can make even in 1977.
And then after I skim through Wikipedia entries enough I find out that there was a connection between these guys and the band behind the haunting track above, and the whole thing all sort of makes sense and I feel like I learned a lot about where Xiu Xiu came from.
Three Stars.
Xiu Xiu - Xiu Mutha Fuckin' Xiu: Vol. 1 is the: