Fabulous Muscles

Xiu Xiu includes: Jamie Stewart (vocals, guitar); Josh Stewart (trumpet); Jherek Bischoff (bass).
Recorded in Oakland, California and Seattle, Washington.
These California risk-takers' third outing is also their most digestable, but only in fits and starts. The opener, "Crank Heart," unleashes a particularly confrontational Jamie Stewart vocal over lo-fi percussive crashing and upfront synths that seethe with the sort of melodic menace contemporaries such as the Faint often employ. But while the desired accessibility is attained on several tracks, it is still daredevil experimentation that prevails; songs such as "Nieces Pieces" resemble the sort of ambient deconstructionism Radiohead began to master around the time of AMNESIAC. And while their intentions, both artistically and politically, are much more modest than such U.K. icons, Stewart's voice and cryptic lyrics lend Xiu Xiu--and FABOULOUS MUSCLES-- some serious avant-garde muscle.