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Feb 11, 2019For going on 20 years, when Xiu Xiu have put out an album, it’s one of that year’s best. It’s no small thrill to see this trend continue.
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The WireMar 7, 2019The blithe ease with which it slips from unruly quasi-techno to Tony Conrad-like violin drone (“Pumpkin Attack On Mommy And Daddy”; “The Wrong Thing”) keeps this consistently diverting. [Mar 2019, p.62]
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Feb 22, 2019There's nothing fetishistic, voyeuristic, or pathetically ambiguous here, more an outpouring of disgust that we seem to be in similarly horrendous times again. There are moments of beauty here too, of course, for that contrast has always been a hallmark of Jamie Stewart's songwriting, and what makes Xiu Xiu bleed where others merely pose.
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Feb 12, 2019Girl With Basket of Fruit is the only record Xiu Xiu could've possibly made after what was the impossibly positive, yet unsure-sounding Forget back in 2017. The music contained on the album is hyper-aggressive, manic, even unpredictable at times, but that's the magic of what Jamie Stewart is doing, for better or worse.
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Feb 8, 2019Affecting, cathartic and unsettling, Girl with Basket of Fruit reflects that while the edge to Xiu Xiu's music has changed with time, it never dulls.
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Feb 8, 2019The band's playfulness with both sound design and the use of sound effects is another excellent attribute of Girl With Basket of Fruit, as it sees them approaching this aspect with a more extravagant desire.
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Feb 13, 2019Girl With Basket of Fruit proves there is no one quite like Xiu Xiu, and because their musical uniqueness may rub listeners the wrong way like a piece of sandpaper against the surface of aged metal, they are better and particularly special for this reason.
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Feb 8, 2019For the most part, Girl with Basket of Fruit holds together with a strange logic.
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Feb 26, 2019Without the contextual anchor that Vo’s art gave to “Deforms,” Girl often gets lost in its own tormented vision. The album plays out like a series of crises, some real, some imaginary, some personal, others global. ... The better angels of Xiu Xiu’s nature are on display in the slow, scraping cello elegy “Amargi ve Moo” and in album closer “Normal Love,” the closest Girl gets to a legitimate pop song.
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Feb 13, 2019After that early-onset dizziness subsides, Girl With Basket of Fruit loses its power and makes little impact, as if these songs were menacing storm clouds that simply drift into and out of town without leaving a trace. It is heavy but hollow, muscular but oddly meaningless, built with streams of images that, however vivid, are the lyrical equivalent of inert gas inside combustion chambers.
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Feb 8, 2019Unfortunately Girl realistically functions as little more than a jumbled hodgepodge of colorless notions, and another notch on the wall.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 28 out of 35
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Mixed: 5 out of 35
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Negative: 2 out of 35
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May 31, 2020
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Sep 2, 2022
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Aug 21, 2022