When reviewing an album inspired by David Lynch‘s work, the obvious musical reference point is Angelo Badalamenti’s Twin Peaks soundtrack. While Badalamenti’s score possesses a melodic and emotional richness that allows it to flourish independently of the television series, the relationship between Lynch’s films and music is often more complicated. Xiu Xiu have long demonstrated an affinity for Lynch’s work, first with their 2016 album Xiu Xiu Plays the Music of Twin Peaks, and more recently through a live performance inspired by Eraserhead. Eraserhead Xiu Xiu documents that concert, raising the question of whether music so deeply rooted in Lynch’s unsettling visual world can sustain attention as an album in its own right.
I tend to approach experimental and ambient music from an unusual perspective. Rather than asking whether it functions as a conventional collection of songs, I imagine how effectively it would establish atmosphere in the interactive world of a video game. Judged by that standard, much of Eraserhead Xiu Xiu is remarkably successful. The opening track, “Viento”, unfolds less like a composition than an environment. Emerging from a low bed of white noise, layers of mechanical drones and inhuman screams gradually accumulate into a dense sonic landscape that feels vividly spatial, as though the listener has wandered into an abandoned industrial labyrinth.
That sense of place continues on the nine-minute “Sleep Synth”. Disorientating sound effects drift across the stereo field before giving way to a barrage of synth drums, only to collapse once again into distorted voices and harsh electronic textures. Rather than presenting melodies or rhythms to follow, the music encourages listeners to inhabit its unsettling spaces. It is an approach entirely in keeping with Lynch’s cinema, where atmosphere often takes precedence over narrative clarity.
Conventional musicality is largely absent throughout the record. “Viento” stretches to 12 minutes, while “Sleep Synth” lasts nine, and both reserve their most recognisably musical moments until well into their running times. Around two-thirds of the way through each piece, spectral organ passages briefly emerge before disappearing once more beneath the surrounding noise. Although each organ possesses its own distinct timbre, together they evoke the image of a ghostly performer playing a neglected pipe organ in an abandoned amusement park. Their rarity makes these fleeting moments of harmony all the more striking.
The album’s most memorable sequence arrives during “Sleep Synth”. Ghostly voices, organ chords and wind-machine effects gradually recede before being replaced by the insistent ticking of a clock, its accelerating rhythm resembling the heartbeat of an increasingly anxious listener. Over this, a disembodied voice repeatedly commands, “Shut up.” After nearly 20 minutes immersed in abrasive musique concrète, the instruction carries an uncomfortable humour. Whether directed at the listener or the sounds themselves, it briefly punctures the album’s otherwise relentless intensity.
When the voice finally disappears, a low, slowed-down horn sound closes the piece. Curiously, it bears a striking resemblance to the famous opening of Van Halen‘s “Runnin’ with the Devil”. The resemblance is almost certainly coincidental, yet it is difficult not to imagine, however fleetingly, escaping Xiu Xiu‘s uncompromising sonic world for the familiarity of classic rock.
The shorter tracks that follow largely continue the established blueprint of disjointed found sounds interrupted by brief organ interludes. Only the closing rendition of “In Heaven”, the song from Eraserhead itself, departs significantly from this formula. Jamie Stewart’s tremulous vocal recalls David Sylvian, while gentle piano and resonant bells provide the album’s only sustained moment of emotional warmth. The effect is unexpectedly moving precisely because it arrives after so much sustained abstraction.
As an act of homage, Eraserhead Xiu Xiu is difficult to fault. Its use of organ, noise and fractured sonic textures faithfully captures the uncanny atmosphere of Lynch’s debut film, even echoing details such as the film’s curious incorporation of Fats Waller’s music. Yet that fidelity also exposes the album’s central limitation. Whereas the Twin Peaks soundtrack possesses melodies capable of surviving outside their original dramatic context, much of Xiu Xiu’s Eraserhead depends on the visual and narrative associations that inspired it.
Heard independently, its remarkable sound design remains evocative, but its abstract structures offer comparatively little to grasp. The result is an album that succeeds brilliantly as an evocation of Lynch’s cinematic world, while proving considerably less convincing as a recording intended to stand on its own.