Xiu Xiu's Women Breaks Ground

One of indie music’s most intense projects, Xiu Xiu is always innovating, and sixth album Women as Lovers is no slouch—at least its first half, says Tiny Mix Tapes’ Julie. Frontman Jamie Stewart has dropped electronics, hired a virtuoso drummer and reversed his recent “stasis.” But Women's troubled finale is par for Stewart, who has “yet to make a front-to-back vital album.”

MusicOMH’s Dave McGonigle is less worried about lopsidedness and more impressed with Xiu Xiu’s ability “to wriggle out of any pigeonholes that they’ve been placed into in the past.” The record’s opener faces the band’s whole history of emotionally damaged music with “positively Beatlesesque” pop tendencies. But, McGonigle vows, the band's quintessential “harrowing lyrics” and “deeply voyeuristic sheen” remain intact. (More Xiu Xiu stories.)