Xiu Xiu is fun. I know fun isn’t likely the right word; playful is closer. Yet, I enjoy the cognitive dissonance of using the word “fun” to describe a band that has, since its aughts genesis, plumbed the depths of trauma, depravity, shame basements, and the morbid mixture of sheer abrasiveness and tightly wound near-nervous breakdown precarity. I’m not just pulling this out of nowhere. I saw Xiu Xiu perform for the first time last year at (Le) Poisson Rouge (I know, where have I been?!), touring their then-recently released album Ignore Grief, an aural barrage as beguiling as it is punishing. Despite the relentlessly exposed feel-bad subjects on that album, from suicide to child sexual exploitation, rendered with horror movie soundtrack effects and early Einstürzende Neubauten-like dying cat screeches, I left the show in awe of the fun the band seemed to be having. Not fun as in smiling, happy people but reveling in gleeful, grab-anything-and-play-it freedom, from drummer David Kendrick rattling a metal sheet to vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Jamie Stewart aggressively blowing a whistle and wailing on a cowbell, or, my favorite, both Stewart and vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Angela Seo blowing up and squealing balloons into a microphone for “Girl with Basket of Fruit.” Don’t get me wrong: the show was still fucked up and fragile (I won’t let Xiu Xiu won’t lose their street cred) with a setlist ricocheting wildly from the raucous reading of a bodega’s corn chip offerings in “Rumpus Room” (“Flaming Hot Cheetos, Fuego Takis!”) to “Petite” from 2017’s FORGET, which threatened to shatter entirely in the sweaty pin-drop silence of the basement club. Yet, that freewheeling and—dare I say—fun approach to music stuck with me.

Fast forward to a year and some change later, no album has ever quite captured the play I witnessed at the prolific band’s live show quite like their new 13” Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto with Bison Horn Grips, released today on Polyvinyl Records. 13” Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto with Bison Horn Grips is, with a few exceptions, driven by a maddened velocity with guitars and drums taking the wheel, an unconventionally conventional combo for the band. This projectile forward motion creeps up unexpectedly with the synth swell of the deceptively subdued “Arp Omni,” named after a synthesizer. This opener is a ballad of groveling devotion that pays awed tribute to a lover with an adorable face, infinite black hair, and sparkling freckles (“who could dare to un-sparkle your dots”). Not only do Jamie Stewart’s trembling vocals express raw vulnerability (“I have done almost nothing right my entire adult life”), but they also celebrate this unnamed lover’s “startling” indiscretions that, because of their wonder, should exist between all bounds of morality (“who could dare to define them as wrong or right”). This is a decadent love ballad for the mentally unwell. It also lures listeners into a safely synth-y lull that is abruptly shattered by the following “Maestro One Chord,” which, with its urgent groove, slams down the gas pedal for the rest of the album.

With the prominence of guitars and David Kendrick’s drums, which I’d argue might be the star of the album, especially on the viscerally pounding “Pale Flower,” certain moments on 13” Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto with Bison Horn Grips veer dangerously toward traditional rock and roll such as the celebratory “freak cool” queer kook anthem “Common Loon” and the dark discotheque of “Sleep Blvd.” In parts, these tracks recall the distorted, downtuned intersection of emo, garage rock, and nu-metal of the late 1990s and early 2000s. I never imagined, for example, that I would hear guitar arpeggios from Xiu Xiu or that I’d want to draw comparisons between the tumbling “Veneficium” to the White Stripes’ Icky Thump (of note, Jack White’s recently released No Name, too, is a return to his own kind of play, even going so far as to cut a mosh pit-worthy song “Bombing Out”). There is a reason the corresponding 13” Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto with Bison Horn Grips press release quotes Blixa Bargeld’s infamous line when stomping his way out of the Bad Seeds during a Muppet-like cover of “I Feel So Good”: “I did not join a rock and roll band to play rock and roll!” And just for fun, the press release also cites another request from Bargeld, this time at a computer store in Berlin where Xiu Xiu also lives: “My name is Blixa Bargeld. And I’m here for my COMPUTER!” See, even this is a sillier band than encountered last year when submerged within the auditory and thematic pitch-black darkness of Ignore Grief.

This isn’t to say that glorious experimental industro-classical cacophony was abandoned entirely here. In fact, its often surprising appearance within the layered and dense-to-the-level-of-psychedelic production by Angela Seo and mix by John Congleton, who was encouraged to “go crazy” and “choose iconoclasm,” is what provides such a palpable sense of play throughout the album. The band seemingly tossed in whatever the fuck they felt like, from the static monitor switching feedback in “Pale Flower” to the doodling flute-y noises at the end of “Sleep Blvd.” to the coy yet foreboding string caresses that, then, explode into a heaven-calling death drive disco-dance with the devil on “T.D.F.T.W.” (that stands for “The Devil Forgiven That’s Why”). Though “T.D.F.T.W.” is the sole track that features Angela Seo’s enigmatic voice, a much-appreciated addition to Ignore Grief, the song the most similar to that prior release is the penultimate, “Bobby Bland.” “Bobby Bland” is stuffed with clicking, dread-dredging whispers, ominous organ blares, and a garbled tumbling noise that sounds like a flushing toilet, all wrapped around a serial killer-esque narrative about “Meat without speech/Locked in a toolshed.” *Shudder*

Though the music itself may at most flirt with accessibility (I wouldn’t say 13” is exactly accessible), Xiu Xiu’s lyrical themes are as piercingly deranged as ever. Not a shocker from an album named after a switchblade—Stewart being, naturally, a switchblade collector. Knives aren’t unheard of objects in the Xiu Xiu canon, from their debut album Knife Play to the song “A Knife in the Sun” to, though Xiu Xiu-adjacent, the memorable butterknife anal awakening in Stewart’s book Anything That Moves. I would also be remiss if I didn’t give a nod to one of the most dangerous merch options I’ve ever seen: an iridescent Xiu Xiu pocket knife (a purchase I’d consider if I didn’t think I’d inevitably stab someone on the train in a fit of annoyance). Like the mouthful of an album title, the lyrics maintain a threatening capacity to alarm. Frequently buried within the mix, Stewart’s sometimes difficult-to-discern vocals jump out of this morass to trace violent visions of a “decapitated fairy prince” or “a broken tooth flying through space” in “Maestro One Chord” and “a brand new chimney made out of a human skull” on “Pale Flower.” Yet, between all of this broken body horror lies a delightfully debased eroticism, including frequent references to grease, Vaseline, and, my favorite, the direct naming of Crisco Disco. This slippery slide into depravity has parallels to the heralding spoken-word call for night-bound corruption and power play in “Pale Flower”, which comes off as a manifesto of sorts:

“Everything the night uses
To dazzle and to corrupt
Imagination
Luxury
Revelation
Art
Meditation
Intellect and
Termination
There is not glory in whipping a night
But Tonite all fools must be whipped”

This reminds me of a memorable observation about Berlin’s staunchly choreographed kink scene from Vaginal Davis: “Tonight is fisting night so we will fist!” And speaking of fisting, lest you think all the shit imagery was left behind in Ignore Grief’s “Tarsier, Tarsier, Tarsier, Tarsier,” “Pale Flower” also produces an evocative vision of “wipe the excrement of a rainbow off into a rag,” rightfully returning the filth to the sanitized, queer rainbow.

On the other end of this erotic excess, though, lies a throbbing, seething desperation that only fully emerges on the final song, “Piña, Coconut & Cherry,” a cheery name for the album’s wrenching and, at times, uncomfortable conclusion. While the song might be, as the repeated lyrics note, “a ballad rather than a rocker,” it is not exactly an easy-listening croon or, as its list of cocktail ingredients suggests, a Jimmy Buffet tropical tune. Instead, this is a doom-laden drone that erupts suddenly with Stewart shouting, “Fantasy! Fantasy! Fantasy! Fantasy!” and spitting out the bitterly scathing, “Happiness!!! I never heard of anything dumber.” Though I am partial to the lyrics that paint a vivid picture of cosmic destruction like “draw and quarter the stars” or “pluck and eat the moon,” 13” Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto with Bison Horn Grips leaves listeners with a gnawing, screaming conclusion featuring Stewart seemingly near tears, howling a disturbed diatribe:

“I loved you this hard for 12 years
I never thought I could love this hard for this long
It makes me insane!
You can’t refuse love like this
It’s criminal
You must love me, love me, love me
You are mine, this is mine
You are mine, this is mine
A ballad rather than a rocker”

This is the obsessive and possessive post-rejection flipside of the adoration heard at the beginning of the album with “Arp Omni.” But, understood in conversation with “Piña, Coconut & Cherry,” that song might just be, as it turns out, a fantasy. Now, I know what you’re thinking: Emily, this doesn’t sound exactly fun. Well, just try going for a run and preventing yourself from yowling out the “Fantasy” rant alongside Stewart, it, like the album as a whole, is infectious and impossible to deny.