Room 40, The Thousands and Street Press Australia are proud to present Xiu Xiu’s Always Australia Tour this October. Returning to the country on invitation from Room 40’s Open Frame Festival, the Brooklyn-based avant-everything/pop-actionists are set to perform dates all across the country.

Xiu Xiu's Jamie Stewart is a poet of the damned. Over the course of the group's albums he has traced out the darkest edge of human civilisation. Cataloguing the stories of those behind closed doors, without voices of their own, his provocative and at times disturbing visions of that which lies out of sight in suburbia are like some testament to the times that surround us.

Their new album, Always, is a volatile marriage of the band's electro-pop sensibilities with a harder post-punk edge. At times overwhelming, Always returns to some of the sound worlds that exist in Fabulous Muscles and Women As Lovers; records that in retrospect have acted as landmarks for the band. Xiu Xiu are an ultimate force of physical sound pressure and remarkable cerebral song visions.

Those familiar with the band's work will take particular note of the times Stewart re-visits profoundly personal accounts from his own life - most prominently on "Beauty Towne" (a not-so-uplifting postscript to the muddle of those depicted in "Clowne Towne" from 2004's Fabulous Muscles) and "Black Drum Machine" (which finishes the narrative of incest and molestation begun on "Black Keyboard" from 2008's Women As Lovers). Elsewhere, Stewart's willingness to broach any subject finds him confronting both the topical and the intimate in equally meaningful ways.

But while such writing is worthy of reverence, Always' most arresting moments lie in its sonic innovation - transforming avant pop elements from an undertone into a bright black focal point while adding new influences such a choral music, kraut rock and animal field recordings.

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