Jamie Stewart, central force of Xiu Xiu: no-one could accuse him of a half-hearted effort. The Air Force has much that we so often lament the lack of - intensity, awkwardness, lushness, no compromise - but these features are so weighty, music so laden with effort, histrionic emotion and multi-instrumentation, that songs nearly break at the backbone under such a load.

What lies at the centre of The Air Force is an A-grade hummable melody, often several condensed into just one song - 'Save Me Save Me' is airborne with graceful arcs of tune, a violin that streams rainbow sparks from the heel of its bow, a colourful melting-pot of tremendous song craft. 'Vulture Piano' has more memorable punch than 'I Luv the Valley Oh!', and thus will probably snatch the mantle of being Xiu Xiu's torch song, pulling listeners into Stewart's sharply uncomfortable world. 'Hello from Eau Claire' runs amock with nursery rhyme simplicity, glockenspiel melody and a bass-line borrowed from an unknown Japanese Game Boy hit, but any base palatability is undermined by some kind of faux-feminism: "I can buy my own cigarettes / I can pluck my own mustache / I can unroll my own tights." The triviality of the claims makes it hard to tell wether the words lie in serious pride or a snotty piss-take of Destiny's Child's 'Independent Women Part I'.

This desire to constantly undermine the central pop-song is ever-evident in much of Xiu Xiu's output. What makes The Air Force special is that the sheer strength of the songs means no amount of destruction can hide the crafting at work. Destruction takes place through discordance, layers upon layers of distortion, chainsaw electronics, inappropriate snatches of bass-line and buzzes. Stewart's voice is never quite clear enough to make out lyrics in certainty, a tremulous falsetto - but even with repeated listening, clarity around the lyrics reveals little of logical meaning, just an awkward, endless pain. Album opener 'Buzz Saw' is all the more attention-snatching for its piano (not tuned in decades) and choir girls (tone deaf and screeching) - Stewart took his song, throttled its neck and kicked it, beat it, left it throbbing and trembling in a dark street gutter.

Violence has an enduring presence - 'Saint Pedro Glue Stick' seems to be nothing more than the sounds of a knock on the door and the proceeding splintering of a harp being broken. 'The Wigmaster' reads as a list of twisted confessions: "I'm gonna spank your ass so hard you're gonna hate the wigmaster / but I'll put two pillows on your dining room chair"; "I'd cover you in wax and wear you like a wig when the night is too cold." Hurting and caressing, hurting and caressing. It seems, in musical form, this album moves back and forth between sore tenderness and a violent turn - coercing the listener into adoring the beauty and open-wound vulnerability, but simultaneously pushing the same listener away with a dirty menace and obtuse lyricism. Yet, for what it's worth, in this abusive relationship between music and listener, I can't help returning to listen again.