For anyone unfamiliar with Xiu Xiu, "Apistat Commander" would be the song I'd recommend starting with when checking out this band. It's easily the most accessible thing they've recorded to date, but with that said, there's really not a whole lot about Xiu Xiu's music that screams "accessible," so approach with caution.

The song starts out innocently enough, with singer Jamie Stewart's barely audible moan and minimal synth backing, before ripping into a "cathartic attack mode" that sounds something like Nine Inch Nails raping the Cure. The song's best moment comes when Stewart screams, "oh, this relief/it's the oddest thing/ohmygod/ohmygod/ohmygod."

short, bouncy cover of the broadcast song.
it's interesting because it removes all the dissonant electronics that make up the "broadcast sound", leaving a much purer-sounding piece of 70's style pop-psych.
in a weird way, this now feels like the alternative universe original version, and the original song the cover.
i love the giddy woooh-ing in the chorus.

If this song was a person, it would have filed a restraining order against me within 3 days of its release. As a part of last year's second best album, "Veckatimest", this song features unconventional musical arrangements which could at times sound dissonant. However, its mystical lyrics and impeccable vocals make this song a masterpiece.

A great track from the excellent "solo" LP by the Portishead vocalist (actually it’s a collaboration with Paul Webb - one time member of sublime 1980's pop group Talk Talk - calling himself Rustin Man for some reason.) The arrangement suggests a low-key take on one of Bacharach/David's statelier ballads, (like say "Aprils Fools" or "Trains and Boats and Planes"), which develops a wonderfully sad groove on the chorus. There are lovely strings, a great, woozy horn solo, and some inspired use of subtle, dissonant electronic textures and spooky female background vocals (both very Ennio Morricone.) Meanwhile, Gibbons does her most stylized take on Billie Holiday at her most stylized - which really shouldn't work, but somehow ends up being just right. Strong song from a very strong album.

Morricone seems to have taken quite a few pages from Komeda's score for "Rosemary's Baby" here for the soundtrack to this Dario Argento serial killer movie. This track features some creepy heavy breathing, cascading dissonant piano notes, and some of the scariest "la-la-la"-ing ever committed to wax. I've never seen the movie, but based on the record, I'm pretty certain that it would scare the hell out of me.

the perfect teen heartbreak country ballad. the arrangement on this just BLOWS me away. check out the dissonant strings and the gentle steel guitar! not to mention skeeters vocals.. she never sounded better in my opinion, it just comes across as so goddamn heartfelt. marvel at the heavy, deadpan spoken word section at the end!
A desert island break-up song if there ever was one:)

Why does my heart go on beating
Why do these eyes of mine cry
Don't they know it's the end of the world
It ended when you said goodbye

When my musical tastes changed nearly 20 years ago, it was a drastic shift. This track, and the album it's from, was definitely significant in this change. It was a completely new sound for me and even now, all this time later, I still love it. Don Ellis was a trumpet player and band leader. He was renowned for composing and arranging tunes in really unusual time signatures (this track, in 7/8, is an example). In fact, it's said that the only song he played in 4/4 was Take Five (a little joke for the musos out there ;)...). It was 1968 that this was recorded, so at the peak of experimentation Western/Eastern music fusion. This track starts off with sitar providing the rhythm which is then picked up by the rhythm section. Ellis comes in with his personally created quarter-tone trumpet. For some, the sound is dissonant and unpleasant. Stick with it - you get used to it. From then on in, it's an energy roller-coaster, as hip as it is cool. After numerous solos, the track subsides and seems to end as the lone sitar returns. But then it picks up the riff again and *BAM* - back into the track with even more energy than before. I'm spent!