For a song title implying impulse-control issues, this is remarkably restrained. Those of us who have hung on with Jamie Stewart's Xiu Xiu over the years have learned to deal with histrionics, but on the first song released from the band's upcoming Women as Lovers LP, the screeching emotion, the cathartic bellow, they never come. Stewart remains in patient whisper, projecting a sort of guarded hopefulness that one of his sour-milk romantic tales might actually resemble sweetness for once. It's like he's trying to talk himself out of possible happiness by calling a lovers' interest in him insane, by imagining worms in his apples. You keep expecting that one petulant tantrum yet even though the off-kilter instrumentation squeaks and bobs, it never really erupts either. The rickety synths have rounded corners and the squawking sax that comes in at the end is conversational rather than combative. This is a Xiu Xiu song, however, and even a minor optimism like this can't escape without being mocked at the 2:30 mark by chiming laughter in double-tracked harmony. Well, if he won't let himself think positively, at least Stewart doesn't torpedo this song's pretty gentility.
Xiu Xiu »
