Xiu Xiu - OH NO ALBUM REVIEW

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Huge missed opportunity not calling it Xiuets, but that’s just me.


Experimental rock outfit Xiu Xiu has really been fucking up my vibes lately. I’ve been trying to listen to their albums, but I’ve been trying to listen to some of their albums. Some of their newest projects have been pretty mixed for me. Plays The Music of Twin Peaks is where the group, well, plays the music of the show Twin Peaks, and I ended up liking that quite a bit. Their most recent studio album, Girl With a Basket of Fruit, is just really incoherent and just never clicked for me. Now, we have a duets album from them titled OH NO. There are some names I recognized on here like Liars and Sharon Van Etten, and many other names I didn’t recognize. Well, let’s just say that this album was aptly titled.

I can give points where they’re due, and I’m glad that frontman Jamie Stewart is showing off his musical chops pretty well. It’s an overall cohesive project, with most of the songs sounding the same. That’s where the problem is with OH NO, though. You’d think that a duets album would utilize the other artists to make something special, right? Wrong. If I hadn’t looked at the tracklist, I wouldn’t have known that there were even features on this thing. It feels like the other artists are just doing their best impression of Stewart, and it just doesn’t sound good at all. If I ever liked a song, it was mainly for the production.

Well, OH NO. This is dismal, honestly. Jamie Stewart and Xiu Xiu really try to get ambitious, and while I can respect that, it just doesn’t land here at all. Everything that was attempted here fell flat on its face. Sorry to Xiu Xiu fans, maybe I don’t get it, but I don’t plan on getting this any time soon.


3/10


Listen here

YouTube Music




OH NO is a Polyvinyl release.

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