Cover albums should at this point come with low expectations. You think of things like filling contracts, overcoming writers block, maybe doing a favor for an old friend. And Sometimes you get a couple of decent songs out of it. But hearing that Xiu Xiu would be covering songs identified with Nina Simone on a new release, it was hard not get excited. There’s an obvious spiritual connection between the artists, a sense of fearlessness and deep belief in the transformative power of expressing raw emotion. Looking at the titles, I could close my eyes and almost hear how some of these songs would play out. Sure, it would be a challenge. Nina Simone is giant, an artist of great complexity whose music is hard to grapple with and harder still to summarize, so there would be the question of Nina Simone to cover: the jazz belter, the ethereal balladeer, the bold activist, the shattered lover, the gifted interpreter of the American songbook. But you could imagine Jamie Stewart finding a way to channel his frayed edges and matchless intensity into something powerful that would highlight something about Simone’s many-faceted approach.