Free album preview: Xiu Xiu 'Women as Lovers'

Just a very brief post, on this occasion, to let you know that Xiu Xiu are streaming, in full, their forthcoming album Women As Lovers on MySpace. The album will be released on January 29th and is available to pre-order from KRS/Buy Olympia. The reason that I am not hanging about to post a wordy music review is that the streaming only promises to be there for a couple of days, so you'll have to jump in quickly! Here's hoping it's a good'un!

Here's (part of) what Kill Rock Stars have to say:

"This will be a famous album. To hear it is to remember music's native purpose, a howl against the gloom.

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With a heart too sensitive to accept humanity's darker side yet also unable to flinch from it, Xiu Xiu is a way of "owning your own shadow." Jamie Stewart has a novelist's eye for juicy details, and a poet's ability to wring impossible emotions out of the English language, finding black humor where there is usually horror, finding horror where there is usually apathy. And Stewart's history-spanning visions of birth and death have never come across more clearly.

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Make no mistake. No other Xiu Xiu album has ever been more approachable or communicative on a basic human level. What people sometimes fail to recognize is that Stewart is writing about all of us, not a freak writing about freakish things. He voices what the rest of us have a hard time voicing and the feelings in the music are ones that we can all relate to."

That all sounds a bit wanky to me, but I do quite like Xiu Xiu, so am quite looking forward to listening to what promises to be a very varied collection of tunes...if you could ever really call a Xiu Xiu song a 'tune'!

mp3: I Do What I Want, When I Want