Pitchfork

By now even the casual Pitchfork reader may have stumbled upon those notorious Xiu Xiu tour Polaroids (and those other notorious Xiu Xiu tour Polaroids), taken by the band's documentarian/roadie David Horvitz last year on film submitted by fans.

Not content merely to haunt the darker corners of the interweb, it seems Horvitz's attempts to capture the candid touring travails of Xiu Xiu will soon shock and awe (and confuse) unwitting moms and dads from the shelves of bookstores everywhere. Xiu Xiu: The Polaroid Project: The Book, due this September from publisher Mark Batty, collects within its colon-happy pages a whole bunch of Horvitz's snapshot ephemera, along with interviews and words from the pen of Jamie Stewart himself. That's pen, you perverts, not-- oh, nevermind.

And because no self-respecting book of indie music Polaroids is complete without a bonus CD, The Polaroid Project will include just that. While the tracklist for said accouterment has not yet passed final inspection, confirmed contributors thus far include Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, Barr, Yellow Swans, Grouper, the Dead Science, This Song Is a Mess but So Am I, High Places' Mary Pearson, Xiu Xiu's own Ches Smith, and, of course, Xiu Xiu.

The Polaroid Project, mind you, is not to be confused with Horvitz' recent handmade photobooks.

If you're not quite prepared to plunge into an entire tome of Xiu Xiu visuals, Horvitz has a pair of digital photobooks in .pdf format (plus info on another book of his photographic wares), up at the Xiu Xiu website now. Per his instructions, you should enlarge the .pdf photos files to inordinate sizes and attempt to decipher them as though your computer screen were a magnifying glass. College procrastinators and office interns bored to tears, your day has just been made.

As far as we can tell, Xiu Xiu are, miraculously, not touring at the moment. UPDATE: WE SPOKE TOO SOON! THEY HAVE FOUR DATES SCHEDULED IN EUROPE IN JULY! AND ONE IN CANADA IN JUNE! SEE BELOW.

They of course have dozens of peripheral and provisional projects popping presently, and it's safe to assume they'll be bombarding the Pitchfork news page again soon.

Xiu Xiu dates:

06-25 Ottawa, Ontario - Babylon (Capital Idea!)
07-25 Ferrara, Italy - Sotto Le Stelle Festival
07-26 Graz, Austria - Postgarage
07-27 Helsinki, Finland - Tavastia
07-28 Emmaboda, Sweden - Emmaboda Festival