Xiu Xiu - Eraserhead Xiu Xiu Review
Experimental legends plough deeper into the dark ambient furrows of David Lynch’s debut feature, paying tribute to the late auteur in characteristically nauseating fashion. Cue bottle smashing.
Xiu Xiu are no strangers to the world of David Lynch. Let alone the fact their industrially-conscious experimental pop would easily slot into the bill of Twin Peaks’ Roadhouse, their fractured-mirror reworkings of that show’s soundtrack received Lynch and original composer Angelo Badalamenti’s blessing. Put to pasture in 2018 – save for a one-off fifth anniversary bonus cover of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me’s ‘A Real Indication’ – Jamie Stewart and Angela Seo have since been littered with high-profile requests to revive and continue their exploration of the beloved series’ indelible music.
Ever committed to wrongfooting their audience and challenging themselves artistically, though, these pleas instead led the duo towards another in Lynch’s oeuvre: his debut feature, Eraserhead. In a filmography brimming with abstraction this first feature length still stands bequiffed above the rest, thanks in part to the omnipresent hum of Lynch and Alan R. Splet’s sound design. A symphony of field recorded ambience, clanging musique concrete and turntable loops – on the surface it seems foolish to dare approach something so mellifluous and uniquely atmospheric. Stewart and Seo, however, saw this as a test of their Lynchian mettle; to embrace the dreamy unpredictability he so treasured and delve even deeper into this smudgy soundworld.
Although Eraserhead Xiu Xiu was spawned in a similar fashion to Plays the Music of Twin Peaks, originating in a spate of live dates stretching into this year, it blooms into a different beast entirely. Notwithstanding the closing cover of ‘In Heaven’, the rest rebuilds Lynch and Splet’s moods from the ground up. If you get the chance, seeing one of these upcoming shows is a must. Whilst the album does a commendable job at recreating the tangible asphyxiation during those performances, it cannot completely capture how smothering those 50 minutes were within its audio-only limitations.
Part of that is due to the absence of the visual accompaniment screened behind the pair: a nauseating broth of fetish photography and video, snapshots of antiquated pornography, and medieval torture drawings. Infected with the same illicit snuff-film quality as Nine Inch Nails’ widely banned and bootlegged VHS Broken, it’s no wonder Xiu Xiu have decided to issue it separately on video cassette only. Should you have the vintage equipment to hand, watching it in tandem adds a further disturbing layer to the already-distressing noises at play.
Where the studio take surpasses its live counterpart is in the potency of its sound design. There’s undoubtedly an intrigue in seeing the cavalcade of homemade and non-instruments in Stewart and Seo’s toolkit scraped, wound and blown-up. However, the clarity and invisibility of the recorded cut renders each balloon raspberry or pipe squeeze as unsettling as the industrial squeals and gurgles that surround them. If the live airings were deliberately oppressive constructions, here the fear is more dynamic, swooning feverishly between wandering silence and cacophony.
Nowhere is this more clear than in the lengthy opening trilogy. ‘Viento’ (‘Wind’ in Spanish) sets out a gaping maw of drone, textured by tingling field recordings and sporadic whistles and buzzes. At around 8 minutes in, the blustery background is interrupted by a series of organ phrases: the first in a series of nods to the sinisterly carefree keys of Fats Waller that pockmarked the original film.
It’s reprised in ‘Sleep Synth’ and ‘Tetra’, two examples of the fine balance between comedic and horrific that is a true Lynchian staple. Juggled impressively here, differentiating the two becomes increasingly difficult. Their grotesquery of slide whistles, moans, quacks and sirens might seem farcical at first, but their persistence grows to fever pitches that even Seo has to command to “SHUT UP!”
The album’s second half is compiled of shorter pieces that hone in on elements of the first three tableaus. ‘Steampipe’ zooms into the omniscient tone shuddering in the backdrop of the entire project, wheezing and hissing before a choir of balloons squeals into a free jazz crescendo. Meanwhile, ‘Smashy Smashy’ wouldn’t go amiss on their 2019 LP Girl With Basket of Fruit, mainly down to its shrieking power electronics groove coalescing from ‘Sleep Synth’’s percussive onslaught. ‘Ether’ is probably the least consequential piece here, but its concise electrical buzz is a solid prelude to the grand finale.
The closing cover of ‘In Heaven’ slides into a lineage of versions that includes the likes of Pixies, Modest Mouse and Fontaines D.C. Xiu Xiu’s take is far ghostlier, arguably even more than the spectral original, Stewart’s quivering vocals nestled only in organ and the slow chime of bells. The album climaxes in the sound of glass smashing, a visceral ending that in the live translation saw Stewart toss a crate of bottles into a trashcan before violently stirring them with a broom. Confusing, brutal, oddly erotic and beautiful – it’s an excellent summation of a work that can stand proudly alongside its initial dreamer.