Xiu Xiu

One wonders where Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart would be without his songs. If songwriting is his way out of pain—his way to contextualize life’s darkest moments—one might imagine he’d be in a world of hurt without music. Instead, Stewart morphs his pain into the painfully beautiful. By translating heartache and darkness into striking lyricism and […]

LISTENING TO XIU XIU reminds me of the first time I heard Morrissey singing for the Smiths. Lonely, beautiful, and charged with anger toward working-class life, Morrissey sang so that we could bleed and feel the pain of isolation in a new way. No longer satisfied with the diamond edge of punk rock, we were […]