Girl With Basket Of Fruit
by Xiu Xiu

Wonderfully dark and even horrifying at parts. Songs like Mary Turner Mary Turner just make you shiver. As bizarre and inaccessible Xiu Xiu can be, this one hits me as one of their strongest efforts

Favorite tracks: Pumpkin Attack on Mommy and Daddy, Scisssssssors, Mary Turner Mary Turner

Maybe the most disturbing thing I've ever subjected my ears to. It's like you're having a bad trip while watching a snuff film.

Two years ago, Xiu Xiu had delivered with "Forget" his most pop album since "Always". His recent collaboration with Mitski, on the track "Between The Breaths", could suggest that the band was claiming a return to more calibrated melodies. But the group prefers to invent rules rather than follow. The mixing work is dizzying, as is the variety of sounds heard. A work probably guided by the search for a singularity so new that we are sometimes close to the ever-heard. The scansions are aggressive and anxiety. The inner rage is overflowing, and Xiu Xiu offers us the expression of this overflow. "Girls With Basket Of Fruit" is an experience of manic violence and extreme fragility, captured by the sensibilities of Jamie Stewart and Angela Seo.

7/10

Best track: "Pumpkin Attack On Mommy And Daddy"

From mdbaxter 03/21/2019 14:25 | #233835

To me, this album is defined by two things: the vocals and the drums. I don't really know what any of the lyrics mean outside of the overtly straight-forward "Mary Turner Mary Turner" but the words are often compelling and vocals, themselves, are usually appealing. The drums are fucking amazing, that's all there really is to say about that. "Pumpkin Attack On Mommy And Daddy" and "Scisssssssors" are the stand-out tracks for me. Honestly, I had no idea what I was listening to for most of the album but I enjoyed it. This was my first exposure to Xiu Xiu but I don't intend for it to be the last.

From Mattdup279 02/19/2019 01:47 | #232170

Quality nightmare fuel

Ok album. The best track here is "Pumpkin Attack on Mommy and Daddy".

B

From lleon79 02/17/2019 03:29 | #232071

This album is a work of art.

Between fragmented rhythm and sad ballads, Xiu Xiu is a band with a very interesting sound. The band mixes pop, rock and experimental. On "Girl With Basket Of Fruit", Xiu Xiu abandons the pop side to focus entirely on the experimental side. More violence, more noise than the previous record. The album is rather successful but sounds less incredible and makes less impression than its previous records.

7/10

Best track: "Pumpkin Attack On Mommy And Daddy"

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From johnner 02/08/2019 12:26 | #231562

After the light touch of Forget, Girl...is a return to Angel Guts’ dark pit of despair. However, even that album had a pop feel Girl...really doesn’t, the music being percussive heavy with the vocals (often) disjointedly laid on top. You could say this is Xiu Xiu but hardcore which says a lot considering Stewart’s career-old preoccupation with humiliation and degradation.
I still don’t know what to make of it but I still can’t stop listening.