Xiu Xiu - 'The Airforce' (5RS) Released 09/10/06

Like no other. Like no other band. Some bands are designed for cookie cutter radio, just like an average Hollywood film that makes you feel clairvoyant because you know what’s going to happen next. Then there are bands like California’s Xiu Xiu that are a delight, an experience, unleashing new narratives, forming other worldly fabrics of sound you hadn’t realised existed yet.

The album gets off to a slow, depressing start with ‘Buzz Saw’ where Jamie Stewart’s Interpol like vocals mutter "your acne is like a pearl" along to the sound of a feeble piano with electronic sounds popping up like the cheap scare tactics employed on a ghost train. However the following two songs ‘Boy Soprano’ and ‘Hello From Eau Claire’ are more upbeat and the latter even sees Caralee McElroy have a whole song to herself for once, with her singing "I can buy my own cigarettes, I can pluck my own moustache". By track six ‘Bishop, CA’ the vocal does begin to grate, being overly dreary and glum, in a Thom Yorke sort of way. But this is Xiu Xiu and before you know it in comes some manic electronic hi-hats, conjuring up images of a thousand serrated edges all competing for the final cut.

And that’s what keeps this album special, it’s unpredictability, it’s ability to surprise the listener. Take ‘The Fox & The Rabbit’ it goes through several transitional states. It starts off with plucking strings and some electronica-lite flitterings, then halfway though it breaks off into a string quartet, for a bit, just because Xiu Xiu can. Then the finale of the song is a real climax with Jamie Stewart’s vocals whipped up in a vortex of keyboard and a flurry of strings. The stand out tracks on this album, destined for single release have to be ‘Boy Soprano’ with its upbeat bleeping contrasted with miserablist vocals and ‘Save Me Save Me’ with it’s runaway chorus and trippy guitar.

Xiu Xiu prove as well as being superior experimental indie kids, they can actually write a good pop song worth singing along to.