Listening to Xiu Xiu’s “Eraserhead” on a hot and stormy Friday afternoon is an atavistic summoning of the many gifts that David Lynch left us to remember him by.
Out July 10 via Polyvinyl (and pointedly absent from Spotify), the band’s latest tribute to the music of Lynch’s most famous work is a follow-up to their release of “Plays the Music of Twin Peaks” in 2016, which was composed under the blessing of Lynch himself.
Over seven tracks, many of which are lengthy, so as to allow listeners to really sink into and meditate upon the clanks and cluds and hisses of the industrial gloom of the film itself, Xiu Xiu’s “Eraserhead” album ends with the heartbreak it builds towards from the start, with frontman Jamie Stewart putting his signature mournful vocals to best use for his rendition of Peter Ivers’ “In Heaven.”
Having recently visited Lynch’s modest grave at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles, which faces a pond that’s become the lazy stomping ground for ducks, peacocks and sad-hearted film fans, I’m wondering now if it would be possible to go back and hide speakers in the greenery that would play Xiu Xiu’s “Eraserhead” on a loop. The sound of Hollywood traffic in the background, birds splashing water, and Stewart’s ghostly delivery of “In Heaven, everything thing is fine,” could be the spell that brings the night blooming jasmine off the text on Lynch’s grave and into the air.
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