Have you ever tried to hug a cactus? If the answer is yes, you might have a pretty good idea of what "Angel Guts: Red Classroom" sounds like. This is prickly serrated music, somehow darker and even more tortured than the rest of Xiu Xiu's prodigious output. On every level, from aesthetics to content, this record unwaveringly confronts its listeners. Lead vocalist and lyricist Jamie Stewart crafts an acrid world of obsession, sexual depravity, and bleak nihilism. Yet, despite it all, moments of positivity (whether sonic or through the underlying romantic undercurrent) break through the pile of maggots on the album's surface. Favorites: 2, 3, 4, 10, 13. FCCs: 5, 7, but pretty graphic throughout DJ Muscat

Others: Scott Walker, Throbbing Gristle, Suicide, The Knife "Shaking the Habitual", This Heat, Jenny Hval "Innocence is Kinky"

1. (3:29) Gloomy tones with an industrial hum pushed way into the right ear. Instrumental mood setter for the rest of the album.
2. (3:45) *** Tense synths with drum machine and pained, quiet vocals.
3. (2:51) ***** Album single and definitely the most accessible thing on the album. Really great, explosive song.
4. (3:00) *** Noisy, industrial and jagged. Weird vocalizations (yet oddly catchy, but that's just me) with lo-fi lead vocals.
5. (3:43) FCC Well…the main hook on the chorus is Stewart saying "black dick" about five times if that's indicative of anything. Really great drum groove and instrumentation but not particularly radio appropriate.
6. (2:47) ** Low synth hum. A Xiu Xiu love song? But of course it mentions joint-suicide.
7. (3:13) FCC "Fuck". Cyclical church bells. Tormented, screeched vocals. Pretty grotesque imagery. Sustained tension throughout the track.
8. (2:24) * Tight whispered vocals that break out into a high energy industrial storm. Manic pig squeals near the end of the song. Kitchen-sink percussion. Vaguely sexual lyrics.
9. (3:39) * Queasy synths and pounding drumbeat. Angry, tortured.
10. (2:56) *** Latin drum machine. One of the more relatively radio-friendly tracks. Found-sound samples of distant voices.
11. (2:56) ** Ominous synth fuzz with deep percussion. Strangled vocals. Noisy and strange and disorienting and captivating.
12. (4:23) Panicked, feverish. Sharp, industrial textures. Pretty disturbing and anguished. Vocoded vocals and blasts of noise to close out the last ~30 seconds or so.
13. (3:05) **** Potential favorite on the album. Tremendous tom percussion with anthemic synths. Feels like what the end of a record should feel like, if that makes sense.
14. (2:28) Reprise of the instrumental opener. Noisier and starker.