Xiu Xiu Unclouded Sky Vinyl LP White/Silver Mix Colour 2024

Tracklist:

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With the consistency and amount of material the experimental outfit Xiu Xiu puts out each year, it’s surprising that things don’t get too repetitive with every release. Xiu Xiu (the brainchild of the project’s frontman Jamie Stewart) always find a way to wring out every little fibre of torment they find attached to their clothing wherever they go, and this year is no different. Last summer saw Stewart and company in Sigur Ros’ Icelandic studio where they recorded this year’s Record Store Day release – ‘Unclouded Sky’ – in the span of twenty-four hours.

However, for their third record release in six months, we don’t particularly see the blues of Jamie Stewart this time around, per se. Totalling nineteen tracks in total, ‘Unclouded Sky’ features covers of both Caribbean and American folk songs originally composed from 1850 to 1920 scattered around nine brief field recordings Stewart himself made while in Guyana’s rainforests. The result is a powerfully spiritual album. Essentially more of a solo endeavour by Stewart alone while under the Xiu Xiu moniker, ‘Unclouded Sky’ doesn’t feature much instrumentation other than a gently plucked 1953 Silvertone guitar and Stewart’s soft voice.

As minimal as its description suggests, there’s a staggering amount of detail to sink your teeth into in its sprawling jungle of tracks. Lonesome Valley is an immediate standout due to the startling dynamic between Stewart’s vocal deliveries behind a warm and catchy guitar tune. From low-key murmuring to high-pitched quavering and bird chirping lingering in the background, Lonesome Valley encapsulates the entire album’s elements in one track. Unclouded Sky, the album’s title-track is a speedy and concise delivery of oft-interpreted Uncloudy Day. With his lips moving nearly as fast as his fingers on Unclouded Sky, Stewart also proves his elegant talents work just as well on the faster tracks as they do on the slower and more graceful ones such as Let the Lower Lights Be Burning, but still dark in typical Xiu Xiu fashion.

Just As I Am, the album’s last track (and also the longest, running just over eight minutes) serves as the final stitch in the album’s already tightly knit structure by weaving both sides of the record together. The first half of the track is another gentle folk number while the second half hears the sounds of Guyana’s jungle fauna once more – with two final minutes of sheer, entrancing silence playing out the end of the record. By the straightforward nature of ‘Unclouded Sky’ contrasting the band’s notoriously arduous nature, Xiu Xiu’s covers here prove that they don’t exactly have to be as perplexingly difficult as their oddly enthralling rendition of The Pussycat Dolls’ Don’t Cha to get the same kind of blunt impact across.