Xiu Xiu is readying a new LP entitled Girl with Basket of Fruit for release on February 8th via Polyvinyl Records. In anticipation of the upcoming record, the band has a new video for the album track, “Scisssssssors.” Directed by Xiu Xiu’s Angela Seo, as well as Anna Lian Tes, the video stars Seo and includes a cameo from the group’s Jamie “Butch Jenny” Stewart.
The first act in a series of three, “Scisssssssors”‘ characters engage in an obscure ritual that seems to reference both mythology and Jack Smith’s experimental 1963 film, Flaming Creatures. In addition to the video below, you’ll also find the cover art and track listing for Girl with Basket of Fruit–as well as a mysterious write-up about the album from the band.
It could be handfuls of reds
It could be turning Caravaggio’s Boy with Basket of Fruit to face the wall
It could be a commission by the Guggenheim entitled Deforms the Unborn
It could be the demon Vetis, whose friends call Him The Life Promiser
It could be that in 1918 a pregnant Mary Turner was hung upside down from a tree by a lynch mob while they cut out her fetus & that this could happen today, as it did then, without consequences for whitey
It could be handfuls of natural pearls
It could be collaborations with master Haitian drummers
It could be doing the wrong thing together forever
It could be long lists of how The Devil’s acts towards children before, during & after their possession
It could be short lists of produce, insects & imagined blues musicians
It could be handfuls of an insane 9 year old’s feces smushed on the lunch table
It could be a psychedelic Chicago house song about a pig & about your parents
It could be your dad’s new husband gave you his boyhood viola
It could be a collaboration with master Yoruba drummers
It could be handfuls of cactus spines & a poison dart
It could be your sister has cancer & they keep chopping parts of her body off
It could be a conscripted arco bass piece that was a dedication to Turkish feminists
It could be Jack Smith has a film called Normal Love
It could be scisssssssors, air conditioner tubes, glasses of ice & seashells
It could be handfuls of hot pink Make Noise 1/8inch audio cables
It could be that Nature is making it clear to us that we deserve it and that we are making it clear to Her that we are ready, ready to go
It could be a short novel called The Rhythm Section Talked about Drugs, The Horn Players Talked about Ass & The Strings Talked about Money
It could be improvised vocals by Elliot Reed & orchestrated vocals by Eugene Robinson
It could be that European religious paintings of male martyrs depict them surrounded by chubby, adoring angels, everyone’s tearful mothers & converted sex workers dutifully sponging out their holy & shallow wounds
It could be that European religious paintings of female martyrs depict them with their nipples being torn off, throats branded & their naked torsos flayed while they are totally alone aside from the men torturing them
It could be handfuls of Diamanda Galás & Roy Orbison action figures
It could be that despite the confusion of this life, people who can still truthfully call themselves human try to push through 2019’s collecting horror
It could be slowed down & fuzzed out field recordings of disappearing frogs
It could be flat purple & black or glossy black & purple
It could be mescal in a bottle & baby on a boob, hair dyed blonde for nobody, nobody move
It could be handfuls of that you just have to stop being a wuss & deal with it
It could be…
Tracklist:
1. Girl with Basket of Fruit
2. It Comes Out as a Joke
3. Amargi ve Moo
4. Ice Cream Truck
5. Pumpkin Attack on Mommy and Daddy
6. The Wrong Thing
7. Mary Turner, Mary Turner
8. Scisssssssors
9. Normal Love
Xiu Xiu is Thor Harris, Devin Hoff, Angela Seo, and Jamie “Butch Jenny” Stewart”
Daniel Brevil – percussion
Devin Hoff – double bass, bass vi, bass guitar
Emmanuel Obi – percussion
Ayo Okafor – percussion
Elliot Reed – percussion, experimental percussion, vox
Eugene Robinson – vox
Greg Saunier – organ
Angela Seo – piano, vox, electronic percussion, organ, harmonium
Ches Smith – percussion
Ace Stewart – vox
Jamie Stewart – vox, synths, guitar, experimental percussion, viola
River Stewart – vox
Recorded by Butch Jenny Stewart at NURSE
Additional recording by Tara Jane O’Neil
Mixed by John Congleton at Elmwood West
Mastered by Lawrence English at Negative Space
PRODUCED by Angela Seo and Greg Saunier
