From ashes beneath a workout bench, dreams of loss, “you leave me out on the steps you dress me up like a boy,” and Celine references (Journey To The End Of The Night), Xiu Xiu have never shied from darkness, fragile thoughts, or gender issues in a scene where it takes little more than a fever for someone to verbally abuse you with “faggot” as their ammunition. In the self-directed video for Women As Lovers track “Master of the Bump (Kurt Stumbaugh, I Can Feel the Soil Falling Over My Head),” we see two guys ready to meet up in the park after some sort of Internet relationship. That’s when things enter Dennis Cooper territory.


(Via P4K)

As far as the title, Kurt Stumbaugh played saxophone on a couple of earlier Xiu Xiu recordings. As far as the lyrics: “If you say my dancing is effeminate / I will never dance again. / And if you say my logic is irreversible / then things will always be the same… / If you note I am smacking of a savagery / Know it’s essential to my masculinity / and if you say my dancing is effeminate / I will never dance again.”

Women As Lovers is out now via Kill Rock Stars.