30 Days in 60 Minutes: May 2025

Featuring Xiu Xiu, aya, 2hollis and the limitations of the Schreiber 9

Nothing to get my ass back in gear like a bunch of new followers being redirected from Josh Terry’s No Expectations, promise that I’ll be posting more frequently now since it’s somehow far easier to justify procrastinating while writing a book than, like, a Home is Where review that’s already running two weeks behind its release date.

(playlist below, at least for the songs that are available on streaming)

Xiu Xiu - “Crank Heart”

I’m not exactly sure where I read this, and as such, I’m not exactly sure I read this at all. But nonetheless, it seems legit, Jade Tree’s claim that every Joan of Arc album sold almost the exact same number of copies. Not necessarily because they failed to gain new fans and certainly not because they put out the same kind of record each time out. Rather, the point was that there is a constant number of people, at any one time, who are inclined to be Joan of Arc fans.

I bring this up because I’m pretty sure Jamie Stewart said the same exact thing about Xiu Xiu; over the past 25 years or so, they’ve undergone a tremendous amount of changes in their sound and lineup and label situation and critical stature and yet, they’re almost kinda reliable at this point. There will always be Xiu Xiu guys and girls and I don’t know if that number is ever meant to exceed a certain amount.

Because of this and how prolific they’ve been, I’d really love to see a legit Xiu Xiu album ranking list; they have a diverse, enormous catalog and as far as I can tell, there’s no real consensus as to which era is his peak. It’s not like when I’ve done recent Spoon or My Morning Jacket lists and there’s an understandable that, say, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga or It Still Moves simply has to be top two, no matter how much you like their more recent work.

I just wouldn’t be the one to do this list. Tempting as it is to do a Xiu Xiu deep dive, I get the feeling that I just didn’t stumble onto this band at the right time of my life. I was vaguely familiar with them prior to Pitchfork giving Fabulous Muscles a 9.0 (a quintessential “Schreiber 9.0,” it clocked in at #50 on the 2004 year-end list). And, in 2004, that meant I was gonna find a record store in Athens that happened to stock 5RC releases.

I was absolutely blown away by the first two songs and, at the very least, wished I heard this album when I was 16 because I was absolutely have played “Support Our Troops OH!” and the title track for my friends on the car ride to high school and blow their minds with how edgy I was (needless to say, from what I’ve heard about Gen-Z reclaiming the word “retarded,” I can imagine “Bunny Gamer” having a new life).

After that, I dabbled in Xiu Xiu albums and couldn’t really get past the feeling that they were, I dunno, Ween for Swans fans or future Rate Your Music posters; back in my peak Pitchfork days, I reviewed one of their albums and only really remember a song where the chorus was “black dick” over and over again. Xiu Xiu is likely forever to be a one-album band for me, and every time I revisit Fabulous Muscles, I realize that they’re a three song band for me (I kinda like “Clowne Towne”). “I Luv the Valley (OH)” towers over everything they’ve ever made, but this comes close, I hear the chiptune Joy Division thing he’s doing here echoing throughout a lot of music I like way more than Xiu Xiu, and that’s where I have to respect them as being a project that’s great (meaning big or immense) without being good most of the time.