Xiu Xiu : Eraserhead Xiu Xiu
You might be surprised to learn that David Lynch’s 1977 feature film debut, Eraserhead, has an official soundtrack. In a movie full of lecherous grandmas, disfigured moonmen, and nematode-ish infants, the score is an easy thing to overlook. Sound, however, plays an integral part in Eraserhead’s singular unease. Nearly every scene in the film is underscored by some kind of incessant ambience, from bug-wing buzzing to assembly-line tinnitus, all of it painstakingly self-produced by Lynch and sound designer Alan R. Splet over the course of four years.
Similar to the cultish adoration Eraserhead has garnered over the decades, Xiu Xiu are a band whose indefinability could be considered their only defining trait. Founded by frontperson Jamie Stewart in 2002, the group’s prolific output has made them fixtures in the realm of experimental music; a must-have entry in the rolodex of anyone bold enough to claim they listen to “everything.” Among their most well-known releases is 2016’s Plays the Music of Twin Peaks, a tribute album dedicated to David Lynch’s beloved mystery series and the gorgeous Angelo Badalamenti score which accompanies it.
In the wake of Lynch’s untimely passing in January of last year, Xiu Xiu (which also includes multi-instrumentalist Angela Seo and percussionist David Kendrick), paid their respects via a currently ongoing tour based on Eraserhead and its soundtrack. Each concert consists of Stewart and Seo onstage, manipulating field recordings and fiddling with “concert specific home instruments” in order to create an atmosphere reminiscent of Eraserhead. With such an improvisational approach, each performance marks a wholly unique evocation of the film. This new album, therefore, isn’t Xiu Xiu’s definitive tribute to Eraserhead—rather just one entry in the band’s ever-evolving relationship with the film.
Eraserhead Xiu Xiu takes the primary signifiers of Splet and Lynch’s original score—industrial noise, liquid gurgles, Fats Waller-inspired pipe organ—and refracts them through the fallible prisms of memory and personal interpretation. It’s likely that your enjoyment of the album will depend on your familiarity with the original film. While the music doesn’t necessarily convey much as a standalone listening experience, its relationship with Eraserhead couldn’t be more compelling.
The first six tracks of Eraserhead Xiu Xiu blend together into a seamless, 42-minute collage of ambient noise that (sorta) resembles the film’s narrative. Seo repeatedly screaming “Shut up!” on “Sleep Synth” harkens to an outburst from the character Mary X in the film; “Steampipe” recreates the hissing ambience of one of the film’s central motifs; and “Smashy Smashy” alludes to the violent fate of the aforementioned infant.
Where Xiu Xiu differs in their rendering of Eraserhead is in the intimacy of the sounds themselves. Despite pulling from the same sonic palette as Lynch and Splet (roaring winds, bubbling cesspools, turning cogs), Stewart and Seo emphasize the minutiae. The noises of this album are uncomfortably tactile, like insects crawling across your brain. It’s impossible to say what has been sampled or not—the more organic and identifiable the noise, the less scrutable the origins.
The record ends on a haunting rendition of Eraserhead’s only definable song, “In Heaven.” Accompanied by the lightest of glockenspiels and the Yoshimura-est of synths, Stewart’s hushed vocals are barely able to eke out the simple refrain. The reverie is shattered by the last 60 seconds, as a barrage of industrial noise returns with the force of a cascading brick wall to remind what kind of movie we’re watching. It provides a ghostly bookend to Xiu Xiu’s conversation with Eraserhead, embracing the dreamlike beauty that defined Lynch’s work for one final ode to his legacy: “In heaven/Everything is fine.”
Label: Polyvinyl
Year: 2026
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Xiu Xiu : Eraserhead Xiu Xiu
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