Lick on my clit! Make this pussy cream! Do this motherfucker how you do them Russian creams…

These deliriously depraved opening lines, whispered close to my ear by Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart over halfway through their new cover album, Xiu Mutha Fuckin’ Xiu: Vol. 1, released today by Polyvinyl Records, made me stop short mid-run. Since I took the record for a spin without giving the tracklist more than a cursory approving glance, I thought, it couldn’t be…it IS! Xiu Xiu venerates Memphis’s pride, iconically filthy rapper GloRilla’s cunnilingus/anilingus anthem, “Lick or Sum,” transforming the punchy hip-hop track into an industrial bump and grind worthy of banging a stranger in the bathroom of a club’s Goth night. Before now, I didn’t know just how much I needed GloRilla’s staccato “Bow! Bow! Bow!” pushed through dissonant static and an electro drum machine.

Of course, I already anticipated becoming obsessed to the level of unwell with some of the covers on Xiu Mutha Fuckin’ Xiu: Vol. 1, which I’ll call XMFX from here on out. Their take on Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams” was the top candidate, considering the band’s interpretations of music associated with David Lynch send my world spinning. Take their version of Julee Cruise’s “Falling” from Xiu Xiu Plays the Music of Twin Peaks, which pushes me to a Fear and Loathing-esque fugue state wherein I fantasize about requesting someone toss a radio into a bathtub while I listen, like Dr. Gonzo’s zap-happy “White Rabbit” listening sesh in a wrecked, grapefruit-filled hotel in Vegas. “In Dreams” on XMFX brings me to a similar state of mad ecstasy as the band forefronts Jamie Stewart’s vocals, which, like the original, begin hushed as they invoke that candy-colored clown, only to rise louder and louder with the octave precariously higher and higher. At one point, Stewart hits a piercing pitch that reminds me of Richard O’Brien’s “Science Fiction, Double Feature.” If this vocal tightrope act isn’t enough of an appropriate approximation of Orbison’s own storied vocal gymnastics (though it does sound like Stewart may have lost their voice after this enormous effort), the music also exists in an echoing 1950s dreamland, which treads the line between wistfully nostalgic and reverberatingly eerie, as if it was recorded in that mysterious glass box in which both Mother and Dale Cooper appear in the first two episodes of Twin Peaks: The Return. Why, it makes me want to huff nitrous, smear on red lipstick, and growl, “PRETTY PRETTY!” Or jump on a car roof and twist.

Yet, even more than “In Dreams,” “Lick or Sum” has consistently captured my attention. Some of this relates to the fact that even as late as the year of our lord 2026, some still consider experimental rock music separate from rap. Somehow that tired old genre snootiness lives on, despite almost everyone having more eclectic musical tastes than ever (I do, at least). So it remains a refreshing and welcome surprise when a band like Xiu Xiu crosses the genre line to not only recognize a younger rapper’s mastery, but also find commonalities with their own subversive sonic intentions. Because GloRilla’s “Lick or Sum” IS subversive, a gleeful cavalcade of smut that harkens back to the lurid legacy of female rappers like our Queen B, Lil Kim’s hardcore lick-that-pussy-right hymn, “Not Tonight,” and rivals the most sexually suggestive of Xiu Xiu’s music—or Jamie Stewart’s sordid sorta-memoir Everything That Moves. The band clearly understands this pervert parallel, foregrounding GloRilla’s lyrics, even dialing back the goth groove in the bridge to bellow, in an artificially deepened voice: “Got the best head from a Libra and the best dick from a Cancer. He said he never ate no ass, well, I’m ‘bout to set the standard.”

Part of my excitement over Xiu Xiu’s GloRilla cover has to do with my understanding of covers as more than simply redoing another artist’s song. To me, covers have always read as musical love letters, a reason why beginner bands often attempt to take on, to varying degrees of success, their favorite tunes before setting out on their own path. I’m not the only one who sees covers as worshipful acts. In XMFX’s accompanying text, the band compares a cover to “reverence” with the album, “a small honorific offering to the muse that created us.” And as a fan of all forms of devotion, cover albums are some of my favorites, whether Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ curdled junk sick schmaltz on Kicking Against the Pricks or Cat Power’s numerous wistful and melancholic cover albums, from 2008’s Jukebox to her transformative acoustic to electric, Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert. What makes these albums work is how the musicians sidestep the urge to perform karaoke out of deference to the originals, a tough decision if you’re trying to take on icons like John Lee Hooker or Bob Dylan. Instead, the best cover albums filter role models’ originals through the covering band or performers’ singular sound without losing that deliciously prayerful devoutness.

If treading that line of faithfulness and experimentation is the marker of a great cover album, then XMFX nails it. Instantly, actually. Their first track, Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer,” begins with an ominous industrial cranking reminiscent of the dissonant opener, “The Real Chaos Cha Cha Cha,” on Xiu Xiu’s feel-bad masterpiece, Ignore Grief. This is a fake-out as the song veers from the predicted plod into a raucous, psychotically psychedelic organ-blaring boogie. Not even Xiu Xiu can resist the berserk buoyancy of Talking Heads’ original. Yet, they don’t fully don David Byrne’s gigantic oversized suit; the song still retains Xiu Xiu’s characteristic aural abuse. Sure, “Psycho Killer” may be fun, but Xiu Xiu’s thickly layered mix is such a wall of sound that it’s actually (perfectly) punishing, an ideal bookended pairing with the similarly over-the-top conclusion, The Runaways’ “Cherry Bomb.” With “Cherry Bomb,” Xiu Xiu maintains Cherie Currie’s adolescent snot-nosed sneer, yet they replace the guitar-heavy glam with Suicide’s pulsating rhythm coupled with bursts of Metal Machine Music feedback. As uncompromising as their “Cherry Bomb” is, with its grating repetition of “BOMB BOMB BOMB,”  just try to stop yourself from ch-ch-ch-ch-ing alongside them.

Understanding XMFX as an obsessed homage also makes flipping through the tracklist similar to voyeuristically scouring a person’s bookshelf, as it exposes the band’s myriad influences. Some are predictable, like the tragic, magic sleaze of Soft Cell’s “Sex Dwarf” and the driftingly melodic yet still unsettling take on Coil’s “Triple Sun,” while others are more surprising. I mean, Robyn?! Yet others pay tribute to two in one. Xiu Xiu’s “Warm Leatherette” is closer to The Normal’s post-punk original, unless you consider its UFO abduction blooping and bleeping a nod to Grace Jones’s alien beauty and her domineering disco funk version of the song, which I DO. Similarly, Xiu Xiu warps “I Put a Spell on You” into a shrieking, sax-heavy no wave cacophony. This not only genuflects to Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’s notoriously maniacally yowling and growling live acts, but its aggressive flurry of James Chance and the Contortions-esque sax harkens back to the heavily romanticized days of the Mudd Club.

Alongside surprises like the unexpectedly startling sax, Xiu Xiu adds a healthy dose of their unmistakable experimental racket that is such a joy to witness in live shows: the ambient howls, tortured cat screeches, squiky-squeaky giggles, Eraserhead baby wails. Many of these noises directly recall moments on Xiu Xiu’s most recent albums, which isn’t a shocker considering XMFX is a collection of one-offs recorded since 2020 for their Bandcamp subscribers. Obviously, some of those album experiments would bleed into their covers. Appropriately, these sounds appear at their most aurally taxing in the band’s version of Throbbing Gristle’s “Hamburger Lady,” which swaps Genesis P-Orridge’s telephone static Manchester gurgle with the clarity of Angela Seo’s quiet lilt. More than in the original, Seo’s clear delivery allows the band to spotlight Throbbing Gristle’s deeply disquieting story about a gory car accident with the tube and burn-covered hamburger lady singed from the waist up and down, images that are still core-shakingly distressing almost fifty years on, made even more so by the band’s discordance of whining, whistling, errant voices, and periods of avalanche crumbles.

It’s not just the random sounds, though. XMFX also retains Xiu Xiu’s preference for combining explosive clamoring commotion with episodes of pin-drop quiet fragility. Here, the latter comes in the form of a cinematically heartbroken version of Robyn’s “Dancing on My Own” and perhaps even more vulnerable, a take on Daniel Johnston’s already wrenching “Some Things Last a Long Time” (also previously covered by Our Lady of the Sad Girls, Lana Del Rey). Xiu Xiu’s “Some Things Last a Long Time” dials up the drama with orchestral, bell-bonging grandiosity without losing Johnston’s voice-wavering emotional rawness.

While love-sick despair and yearning are evergreen topics for any band, let alone Xiu Xiu, the presence of This Heat’s post-punk, proto-Megalopolis “SPQR” stands out as the most timely selection, given, well, everything. “SPQR” (named for Senatus Populusque Romanus) ironically spews the Roman Empire’s proud conquering, enslaving imperial ideology. Resurrecting This Heat’s song, which I’ll admit I never knew before listening to XMFX, Xiu Xu drags its excess and hubris before the fall into the present with guitar-searing velocity, authoritarian percussive claps, and an Ian Curtis monotone. And it couldn’t come at a more appropriate time, considering the variety of Hitler plagiarism and Neo-Nazi favorite sea shanties being posted as AI slop by various departments of the United States government on X, along with the president promising (fear not!) a day of reckoning and retribution to the polite people of Minneapolis. A presumed unstoppable empire built on blind belief in power and exploitation feels pretty goddamn eerily relevant, making the song ripe for Xiu Xiu’s revisitation. We, too, like the Romans, will live to regret it.