Xiu Mutha Fuckin’ Xiu: Vol. 1

XIU XIU

Albumreview by Jan Vranken

Polyvinyl Records | January 16, 2026

For over two decades, Xiu Xiu have operated in the shadowlands where beauty and dissonance collide, where emotional devastation meets sonic experimentation. Since forming in San Jose in 2002, Jamie Stewart’s ever-evolving project has built a reputation for unflinching vulnerability and boundary-pushing artistry. Now, with Xiu Mutha Fuckin’ Xiu: Vol. 1, the band offers something both familiar and revelatory: a covers album that functions as a love letter to the music that shaped them.

This collection, curated from the band’s subscription-based Bandcamp series launched in 2020, presents twelve reimagined tracks spanning decades and genres. Think of it as a musical séance conducted by artists who approach covers not as karaoke exercises but as acts of devotion. If you’ve ever wondered what Talking Heads’ ‘Psycho Killer’ would sound like if it had been recorded in a haunted 1960s recording studio by Joe Meek’s ghost, Stewart and co-conspirators Angela Seo and David Kendrick have your answer.

SONIC ARCHAEOLOGY

The album opens with that Talking Heads classic, transformed from David Byrne’s quirky anxiety into something more acidic and dramatic. The production layers howling vintage organs over primitive, almost tribal percussion that crashes about like a drunk playing spoons in your kitchen. It’s disorienting in the best possible way, setting the tone for an album that refuses to merely replicate.

The Normal’s ‘Warm Leatherette’ receives a treatment that’s sleek and seductive where the opener was unhinged. A scree of grey electronic noise envelops the track ninety seconds in, mutating the original’s cold synth whistle into something approaching psychedelia. Meanwhile, ‘Hamburger Lady’ transcends even Throbbing Gristle’s claustrophobic original. Where that version was relentlessly oppressive, Xiu Xiu find pockets of dark humour and strange hope amid the industrial murk. The vocals are beyond creepy, suggesting nursery rhymes sung in a burns ward.

EMOTIONAL WHIPLASH

Perhaps most unexpected is the album’s crown jewel: a cover of GloRilla’s 2023 track ‘Lick or Sum.’ Here Xiu Xiu pivot completely, embracing hip-hop with hushed, confessional vocals that make listening feel like eavesdropping on something private. It’s a revelation, demonstrating that the band’s artistic curiosity knows no genre boundaries. The track luxuriates on its massive, shiny sonic couch while the original’s braggadocio transforms into something more intimate and unsettling.

The emotional range here is staggering. Robyn’s ‘Dancing on My Own’ loses its bittersweet bubblegum sheen, becoming instead a parched Victorian funeral march, devoid of hope. Roy Orbison’s ‘In Dreams’ emerges cold and ghostly, as if recorded in an abandoned Lancashire cotton mill. Daniel Johnston’s ‘Some Things Last a Long Time’ receives a fragile, orchestral treatment that reportedly moved Stewart to tears during recording, and it’s easy to hear why. If there ever was a sincere and wounded voice in music, it was Johnston’s, and Xiu Xiu honour that vulnerability without exploitation.

MINOR MISSTEPS

Not every track achieves lift-off. Soft Cell’s ‘Sex Dwarf’ feels somewhat perfunctory, with arrangements that seem tacked onto the original edifice rather than fundamentally reimagining it. The closing ‘Cherry Bomb,’ while deliberately playful in its stripped-down approach, can feel slightly annoying in its bedroom-recorded impishness, especially following the emotional weight of what precedes it. Yet even these weaker moments serve a purpose, functioning as palette cleansers or teenage v-signs to the emotional devastation elsewhere.

CONCLUSION

What emerges from Xiu Mutha Fuckin’ Xiu: Vol. 1 is something rare in the covers album landscape: a collection that feels essential rather than obligatory. These aren’t exercises in clever reinvention or ironic distance. They’re studies of songs that meant something to the band long before they recorded them, approached with the spirit of paying tribute rather than showing off.

For listeners unfamiliar with Xiu Xiu’s challenging back catalogue, this might actually serve as an accessible entry point, a Trojan horse of recognizable melodies hiding experimental impulses. For long-time fans, it’s a window into the influences that created one of America’s most uncompromising bands. Either way, it’s a reminder that in the right hands, even the most familiar songs can be transformed into something strange, beautiful, and new.

RATING: 7.8/10

(Polyvinyl Records)

For fans of: Coil, Throbbing Gristle, This Heat, Daniel Johnston, The Knife

Reference track: If you’ve ever been moved by Daniel Johnston’s heartbreaking sincerity on ‘True Love Will Find You in the End,’ the band’s tender treatment of ‘Some Things Last a Long Time’ will resonate deeply.