Experimental Post-Punk Band Xiu Xiu Plays the Music from David Lynch’s Twin Peaks

Fans of Twin Peaks, the ear­ly-1990s tele­vi­sion series co-cre­at­ed and in large part direct­ed by David Lynch, have had a lot to get excit­ed about recent­ly. Most promi­nent­ly, we’ve heard a lot of will-he-or-won’t-he talk about whether Lynch will par­tic­i­pate in the show’s much-dis­cussed 21st-cen­tu­ry reboot. That has no doubt stoked pub­lic inter­est in Twin Peaks (avail­able on Hulu here), which in some sense has nev­er real­ly died away, even though it went off the air 24 years ago (and by all accounts got pret­ty lack­lus­ter in its sec­ond sea­son); some of us, while we wait for the new series, have even engaged in all man­ner of Twin Peaks-themed writ­ing, art, and even music projects.

Many Aus­tralian Twin Peaks fans, while they wait for the new series, made it over to Queens­land’s Gallery of Mod­ern Art ear­li­er this year for the exhi­bi­tion David Lynch: Between Two Worlds. If they went on April 18th, they saw exper­i­men­tal post-punk band Xiu Xiu per­form their own inter­pre­ta­tion of the Twin Peaks score. “The music of Twin Peaks is every­thing that we aspire to as musi­cians and is every­thing that we want to lis­ten to as music fans,” says Xiu Xiu leader Jamie Stew­art. “It is roman­tic, it is ter­ri­fy­ing, it is beau­ti­ful, it is unnerv­ing­ly sex­u­al. The idea of hold­ing the ‘puri­ty’ of the 1950s up to the cold light of a vio­lent moon and expos­ing the skull beneath the frozen, wor­ried smile has been a stun­ning influ­ence on us.”

Xiu Xiu, since Stew­art formed it in San Jose in 2002, has steadi­ly gained a rep­u­ta­tion as, in the words of Vice, “the weird­est band you know.” Part of that has to do with the for­mal adven­tur­ous­ness of their music itself, and part to do with their invari­ably dis­turb­ing music videos. No won­der, then, that they would feel such an affin­i­ty with David Lynch, no stranger to get­ting called “weird” by audi­ences and the mak­er of some unset­tling music and music videos him­self. Giv­en the poten­tial over­lap in their fol­low­ings, and giv­en that nobody seems to know how many pro­duc­tion deci­sions the new Twin Peaks has yet made, per­haps some­one can check and see whether Xiu Xiu might have the time to record its score?

via Wel­come to Twin Peaks

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Title Sequence, Recre­at­ed in an Adorable Paper Ani­ma­tion

Play the Twin Peaks Video Game: Retro Fun for David Lynch Fans

David Lynch’s Music Videos: Nine Inch Nails, Moby, Chris Isaak & More

David Lynch’s New ‘Crazy Clown Time’ Video: Intense Psy­chot­ic Back­yard Crazi­ness (NSFW)

David Lynch’s Sur­re­al Com­mer­cials

David Lynch Presents the His­to­ry of Sur­re­al­ist Film (1987)

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.