Xiu Xiu are exhuming the bones of other people’s songs and reassembling them into something unsteady and glowing. The result is Xiu Mutha Fuckin’ Xiu: Vol. 1, a new covers album arriving January 16 via Polyvinyl, where Talking Heads, Daniel Johnston, Robyn, Throbbing Gristle, Soft Cell, GloRilla and others are dragged through Xiu Xiu’s emotional machinery and come out reconfigured.
This is not a tribute record. It’s an act of listening so intense it borders on devotion. Jamie Stewart describes the project as an offering rather than an intervention — not a question of improvement, but of learning. A slow, reverent dissection of the things that once moved them and still refuse to let go.
Two early transmissions have surfaced: The Runaways’ Cherry Bomb, stripped of its swagger and wired with new voltage, and Daniel Johnston’s Some Things Last A Long Time, already fragile, now rendered almost unbearable in its closeness.
Xiu Xiu remain committed to the idea that songs are not fixed objects, but living rooms you can return to and rearrange, as long as you are willing to leave part of yourself behind.
