Xiu Xiu's 'Eraserhead Xiu Xiu' Is a Noise Record Only They Could Make
Nearly fifty years after David Lynch and Alan R. Splet built one of cinema’s most unsettling sound designs for Eraserhead, Jamie Stewart and Angela Seo have taken on the strange task of translating that soundscape into a Xiu Xiu record of its own. Eraserhead Xiu Xiu, out via Polyvinyl, isn’t a score or a cover album so much as a conversation across decades — industrial noise and organic texture rebuilt from the ground up, with percussionist David Kendrick rounding out the core trio.
The Sonic Breakdown
The Production & Mix
The Low-End: Clash’s review put it best: “everything sounds amazing — you can hear every static fizz, groan and synth drone.” The mix favors clarity in the noise itself, letting individual mechanical textures and bug-wing buzzing sit distinct rather than blurring into a wall of static.
The Spatial Dynamics: The record moves in peaks and valleys rather than sustained abrasion, alternating hushed, glockenspiel-laced passages with dense industrial surges — a dynamic range that keeps the record’s more uncomfortable stretches from becoming numbing.
Standout Performance
The closing rendition of “In Heaven” is the clear high point, Stewart’s hushed vocal riding a bed of delicate glockenspiel and synth before the track detonates into a dramatic industrial finale — a fittingly ghostly bookend to the whole project.
Why It’s Certified
This is a record that could only exist because Xiu Xiu has spent decades refusing to repeat themselves. Turning one of film history’s most disturbing sound designs into “one of the best noise albums in recent years,” per Clash’s 8/10 review, is the kind of swing that only a band this fearless would even attempt — and it lands. Certified great.