Eraserhead Xiu Xiu, Cottiers Theatre, Glasgow, 4th Feb (live review)

OK, first things first. An experimental musician taking on one of cinema’s most profound, beloved and difficult works is a very ambitious and intimidating thing to do and the sheer confidence of an artist to do that is to be applauded, never mind taking it on a global tour and filling a ~500 cap venue on a cold February evening. 

It is a high bar to set yourself; a film that is such a unique expression of one artist’s mind, that throbs and pulses with dread and weight and brutal beauty, a film that influenced artists from Stanley Kubrick to HR Geiger. Xiu Xiu have taken on Lynch before on the excellent 2015 album Xiu Xiu plays the Music of Twin Peaks and they seem to have a real appreciation, a real kinship with Lynch’s work. On paper, this should be something special.

Part of Lynch’s talent was making it look easy. And as anyone who remembers the slew of ‘weird small town’ shows that emerged in the wake of Twin Peaks’ popularity or has sat through a film student trying to be ‘Lynchian’ can attest, it is staggeringly difficult to recreate what he did without it seeming silly, or affected – or worse, boring. And sadly that’s the effect here; there are the grainy black and white visuals, skittering insectoid musique concrète and broken glass and cartoonish boings and the omnipresent ominous whooshing, but ultimately it just feels a bit hollow. A bit ordinary.

The tension and relief of Lynch and Alan Spelt’s score, the crushing weight of that industrial drone punctured by moments of beauty isn’t here; when Jamie Stewart starts singing ‘In Heaven’ it isn’t the chink of light in the darkness but a bit of an inevitability. I heard someone tut and sigh when the projector showed an image of Lynch himself, just at how expected it was.

It just all feels a bit cynical. Like a set of cherry-pie earrings on an etsy shop. A chevron print t-shirt. A thing that represents the surface without looking deeper.

Lynch famously described Eraserhead as his most spiritual film, and it is that which is missing from this performance. He was an artist who communicated duality – the fear and exhaustion of the new parent bound in the overwhelming love that doesn’t contradict but coexists. To read that as the surface, to read that as weird and spooky and gross is part of the story but not enough of it. He was silly, yes, but he was never arch. Never cynical. Everything from homicidal monkeys to talking logs was done with one hundred percent full-hearted honesty and depth of humanity. 

Look, I know that ‘expressionist art isn’t as good as Eraserhead’ is a take on a par with ‘picture of lady not as good as Mona Lisa’, but being so overt about the connection – and let’s face it, selling a load of tickets off the stolen valour of it – means that it can’t be assessed in isolation. It’s a high bar to set yourself, but a real shame that it misses.