I haven’t had time to fully digest “The Air Force,” the latest album by Xiu Xiu — a band I generally find more admirable than listenable — but a cursory listen finds them sounding as brilliant and as maddening as ever, tortured and combative, and with a kind of confrontational intimacy that is inimitable. “Boy Soprano” has a heavy dose of Jamie Stewart’s thrilling video game/war zone programming and extraordinary vocals, which for me vacillate between being tremendously moving and a painful aural assault — which, I’m sure, is exactly the point.
— T.B.
