Xiu Xiu‘s new LP Angel Guts: Red Classroom will come out February 4th on Polyvinyl, and the first preview is this beautiful and daunting track “Stupid in the Dark“! We are told that this new record, named after an erotic, noir Japanese thriller, represents “Xiu Xiu’s descent from grayness into the deepest blackness endurable”, which, considering the emotional weight of his past work, presents quite a terrifying proposition.
The songs on Angel Guts… are steeped in the violence of frontman Jamie Stewart’s new locale. The artist recently moved to Los Angeles, after spending four years in North Carolina, and unbeknownst to him, it seems he had chosen to live in a neighborhood with quite a dangerous reputation…”a park divided among four gangs, a lake routinely dragged for bodies, a building wherein two infant skeletons were recently uncovered”, and the danger of his surroundings, and the isolation it can breed, has soaked deeply into the new work. He explains, “I know to a degree I must have romanticized it, but when it’s not safe to go out at night, what else can one?”
For the new record, Stewart has also stripped back the instrumentation, using only analogue synth and drum machine, augmented by live drums. “Stupid in the Dark” focuses it’s murderous intent around aggressive, hard banging beats, and synth blasts of funeral fog, burying the psychodrama of Stewart’s vocals in the grit of the mix, before veering wildly into car crash transitions, and noir passages of cinematic mystery and sonic rampage.
Look for Angel Guts: Red Classroom to come out on limited edition, 180-gram, clear, red vinyl, as well as on red tape cassette. In addition, Xiu Xiu is getting set to release NINA, his collection of Nina Simone covers, on December 2nd via Graveface Records.
