SPILL ALBUM REVIEW: XIU XIU – GIRL WITH BASKET OF FRUIT

Xiu Xiu
Girl With Basket Of Fruit
Polyvinyl Records

San Jose-based experimental band Xiu Xiu’s fourteenth studio album, Girl with Basket of Fruit, was conceived as a trip through the Black Lodge from the critically acclaimed television series, Twin Peaks. This is unsurprising, considering that the band released a spectacular album covering the show’s music in 2016. The album is a cut-up method tour-de-force of weirdo music, a Finnegan’s Wake of sound which deserves to be placed on a level with some of the famous works of art that it samples and references.

Xiu Xiu’s latest trek through hells and mystical worlds is loaded with haunting monologues, rhythms borrowed from world music, odd time signatures, and legitimate feelings of absolute dread. The album’s only possible shortcoming is that it does not align with the conventional definition of music. It also demands undivided attention, and may bore distracted listeners. Girl with Basket of Fruit is not for the faint of heart or soul, which is most likely Xiu Xiu’s intention. The lyrics are like snippets of clichés and nursery rhymes for babies born into a world torn apart by war. In closing, Xiu Xiu’s latest album is a difficult listen with a payoff surpassing anything that a review could say.

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