‘Girl with Basket of Fruit:’ Xiu Xiu’s Protest in Times of Trump

Xiu Xiu’s music abides by no genre. The avant-rock group’s core comes in iconoclasm, desperately and aggressively challenging the status quo. During Donald Trump’s first presidential term, the former duo hardly refrained from criticizing the populist and alt-right politics of the day. Their 2019 release, Girl With Basket of Fruit, teems with queer and anti-racist anger.

Written by Zachary Bolash

Photo courtesy of Marcus Schreiber

Xiu Xiu filled a specific yet necessary niche in the 2000s. Its work balanced frontperson Jamie Stewart’s soprano with gritty industrial noise, placing the experimental outfit in a liminal space between pop and punk. However, the group has evolved beyond its social iconoclasm to develop a thematic gall. As a duo, Stewart and multi-instrumentalist Angela Seo were ahead of their time, creating music that explicitly described gay sex, reclaimed anti-queer slurs, and spoke candidly about abortion. Xiu Xiu has recursively broken the status quo: social conservatism has failed to silence the band’s staunchly progressive politics, a truth that only continued to assert itself during Donald Trump’s first term.

Swirling disinformation and derisive rhetoric marked Trump’s 2016 presidency. In an interview with The Washington Post, the political leader joked that his former Vice President, Mike Pence, wanted to hang gay people. These kinds of comments ravaged queer folks in the president’s four-year temper, and the music of the period reflected that. Xiu Xiu in particular exploded with staunch aggression in its 2019 release, Girl with Basket of Fruit.

On the album’s titular track, the duo attacks at the alt-right’s religious hypocrisy. The track kicks off by frantically veering between crude depictions of sexual assault and the Catholic canon’s imagery of female virgins. From one verse to another, Stewart jumps between descriptions of “[fucking] ducks” and a “life-promiser,” suggesting the omnipresence of a higher power.t This lyrical friction represents a form of high protest against religious hypocrisy: the ducks signify rape survivors, who experience violence at the hands of perpetrators who adhere to a Judeo-Christian God, the “life promiser”,to justify their cruelty.

Similarly, American conservatism — despite clinging onto ideas of sexual purity — frequently spews rhetoric conducive to the sexual violence of women.  Namely, Trump’s dubious pledges to his Christian faith seem fundamentally discordant with boastful claims that he sexually assaulted women in the 2000s. In “Girl With Basket of Fruit,” Xiu Xiu accurately portrays the Trump-era realities that persist for many women, who are afraid of and preyed upon by men who staunchly profess Christianity.

“Mary Turner Mary Turner,” another politically charged cut on Girl With Basket of Fruit, extends Xiu Xiu’s criticisms to racism. The track's title references Mary Turner, a pregnant Black woman who was lynched after openly denouncing her husband’s own lynching. Over bellowing industrial noise, Stewart luridly details Mary Turner’s murder at the hands of a white mob, describing how she was “hung up by her ankles” and “set ablaze.” With its brooding, industrial track, the track refuses listeners refuge from the grisly lyricism. "Mary Turner Mary Turner" forces attention to the racist history of America and the violence it wrought upon Black people, as well as white people’s silence in discussing the country’s entrenched racism out of privilege or guilt..

Once more, this release aligns with the virulent racism that Trump spewed Between Aug. 11 and 12 2017, white nationalists under the “Unite the Right” movement protested Charlottesville’s decision to remove a monument of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. In this rally, one of the far-right protesters purposely drove into a group of counter-protesters, subsequently killing civil rights advocate Heather Heyer. In response to these rallies, Trump stated that there were “very fine people on both sides.” With this comment, Trump turned his back on the racist history of America and, in turn, America itself. At this moment, it became more crucial than ever for artists to oppose the United States' racist history. Xiu Xiu's response to Trump and racism represents justified anger. Reacting to Trump’s caliber of racism, one may understandably respond with rage. In Mary Turner Mary Turner"'s final verse, Stewart states boldly: "Fuck your guns / Fuck your war / Fuck your truck / Fuck your flag." These lyrics represent an utter rejection of American values and the violence it wages against Black people.