We just can’t get enough of our chats with Jamie Stewart. It hasn’t even been ten months since our last interview, yet here we are setting up a third one. The excuse? Xiu Xiu’s new tour. And not just any tour: It’s a brand-new concept called “Eraserhead Xiu Xiu“, which fuses the sonic and visual world of David Lynch’s first feature film with the band’s own vision.
Jamie’s admiration for Lynch is no secret to anyone. But as those who’ve read our earlier interviews know, I’m no lightweight in that department either. Long story short: here’s another conversation between two nerds, bound together by our shared love of Lynch…
Since we last talked, Xiu Xiu performed in Istanbul one more time. How was that experience for you?
Jamie Stewart: Great. Yeah, really good. I thought we played okay and the audience was super nice. The people who ran the club were great. It was a notably positive experience. I also saw an old friend who I hadn’t seen in a long time.
You also walked through the streets and saw lots of cats.
Definitely. (laughs) Difficult to avoid.
Xiu Xiu are set to perform soon a new series of shows titled “Eraserhead Xiu Xiu”, inspired by the sonic universe of David Lynch’s Eraserhead. It is no secret that Lynch means a lot to you and directly inspired Xiu Xiu. After his death earlier this year, you even put out an Instagram post where you mentioned how you often referred to him as your “true father”. My question is, what made you pick Eraserhead among his works to pay him a tribute?
In 2016, we released a Twin Peaks soundtrack album and we were playing that music for a few years, and to our surprise, people seemed to really like it. It did relatively well.
You also went to Istanbul to perform it.
Yeah, that’s right. We stopped doing it I think in January 2018, and then when David Lynch died, people started asking us if we would do it again. We thought about it for a minute, but felt like we didn’t really want to. That music is incredibly important to us, and we didn’t want to turn it into a Las Vegas-like show that we occasionally pulled out. In the moment we were doing it, we were very dedicated to it. It felt very focused and it was very much where we were at. But it felt like we couldn’t really give it everything now we had given it then. It’s hard to really articulate, but internally, we sort of felt we had shifted, and because it’s important to us, we didn’t want to not do the best job we could possibly do. But at the same time, the offers for the shows that we were getting were interesting, for sure.
Obviously, when David Lynch died, I was rewatching a lot of things and Eraserhead was the film that I was the least familiar with. I had just watched it for the second time when it occurred to me that, okay, the soundscapes in it were so distinct and so special, unlike any of his other movies other than Twin Peaks. Without a doubt, Twin Peaks has a really distinct and excellent soundtrack, and the music in the other movies is very, very good, but it’s not as central to the identity of the film. Meanwhile, the sound in Eraserhead, as it is in Twin Peaks, is, in fact, very central. So why wouldn’t we try to do that?
We couldn’t really do it in the same way we did Twin Peaks, because in that, there are fairly normal songs with a verse and a chorus that we could just play. But other than the Fats Waller songs and “In Heaven (Lady in the Radiator)”, there’s no songs in Eraserhead. It’s more of a mood or a feeling. So we had to figure out a way to just pay tribute to it. But there was no real way to do that. I mean, we couldn’t play a 45 minute version of “In Heaven”, you know? (both laugh) How could we say thank you to David Lynch and Alan Splet, who was his partner in the soundscapes and music, with fairly amorphous material? So it seemed like an interesting challenge. We brought it up to our working agents. They thought about it and presented it to people, and it seemed like a few people were interested in doing it.
You already answered my next question. I was gonna ask you about how you would approach the actual performance, because it can’t be a straight up covers set. The sound, as you said, is very central to the film, making it a sort of industrial audiovisual experience.
Yeah.
You called this tour an art installation of sorts, where you will include aspects apart from music, like accompanying visuals. Without soiling too much, what are the actual logistics of the show?
The logistics are not all that original. (laughs) There are things we have not done, but many other people have at other times. We are making a set of visuals that go along for the duration of the film. We’ve never done that before. We did a similar thing in Twin Peaks, but it was just two images going back and forth. This is all pointedly a set of visuals that go specifically along with the music, and we’re playing one long 45-minute long piece inspired by the aesthetics of Eraserhead, but also, we’re taking a fair amount of liberties with what we feel an expansion of the aesthetics of Eraserhead might be. I’ve described it this way a couple times, and it’s sort of a dumb description, but it is clarifying a little bit: If Eraserhead is a planet, we are beings who grew up on the planet of Eraserhead. Then we built a number of satellites and asteroids that orbit around that planet. Our version is basically those asteroids and satellites.
And do you play a version of “In Heaven” during all that?
We do play it, yeah. I mean, it’s too central, very recognizable. It’s not exactly the same as in the movie, but when you hear it, you will know that’s what we’re doing. And we are working with the Fats Waller music too.
On the deluxe edition of the Eraserhead Soundtrack found on streaming platforms, there is a track called “Pete’s Boogie”. What about that one?
Oh, no, I don’t think we do that. I don’t think we directly address that. I didn’t know that. We should have done better research!
It’s a deep cut anyway. I was just curious.
I mean, we’re trying to do deep cuts. I feel like we failed slightly.
Don’t worry, I don’t think anyone will think you failed, including me. You will also use a bunch of field recordings in the show. What sounds do those include? Where did you capture those sounds?
Some of them we recorded around Berlin. I have a pretty big collection of field recordings. We just took stuff from our “library”. Some of them I recorded in Los Angeles, and Angela recorded some in both here and LA. And then in some, we were in Indonesia for little trips. So there are those three places, recorded in our homes and this vacation, and then there are ones from a big library of other people’s field recordings.
Considering you already have an album of Twin Peaks music, I was wondering if you would record and release these shows as a live recording as well.
We’re gonna do a studio recording of it next year.
Nice.
I was surprised our record label wanted to do it, because it’s just a full on experimental record. They’re being very supportive, which is nice of them.
I mean, the Twin Peaks record you made is very popular among fans. They love it.
I appreciate that, but, you know, those are songs. It’s a different thing.
Yeah.
But I’m really excited we get to do a record of it.
For now, the only Xiu Xiu record I have on vinyl is Twin Peaks. I wanna get other records too, of course.
Oh, great! Thank you.
David Lynch also had lots of songs under his name. How much are you into all of that?
Yeah, I haven’t really explored his musical output. That’s separate from things that he did in movies. It’s not for any reason. I’ll get to them eventually. I’ve heard a couple where he sang and I thought he sounded great.
Time to switch onto nerd mode…
You are talking to the right person.
Can you tell me one random, maybe a bit underknown David Lynch fact that you love?
Oh, for many years he ate quinoa and broccoli for dinner. (both laugh)
There is also a video where he talks about his daily eating routine, and he says he only goes off that when he’s on a tour or something.
Yeah, I can understand. I also like having a routine.
Yeah. There was a time in my life where I also ate the same menu from the restaurant every day.
Really?! That’s so cool! (both laugh)
Adventures are cool and all, but to me, there needs to be a routine central to your living.
I think it very much works for me. Yeah, I need one or I feel a little unmoored.
Out of curiosity, how are you with meditation? Lynch was a very spiritual person who did transcendental meditation (TM). Are you into that?
My dad introduced me to it when I was pretty young. So it has on and off been a pretty regular part of my life. It’s certainly something that I should do more of. It kind of comes in and out of habit throughout my life and when it is a regular habit, as happens with everybody, the positive effects are quite noticeable. A close friend of mine who is an art colleague got into TM recently, and says he wishes that he had done it so much longer. It’s really been positive for him. There’s a TM center in Berlin, and I tried to look into it. They have an English introduction course. My German is still coming along. I was investigating that for a minute and then got busy and forgot. But thanks for reminding me again. (laughs)
I have tried to do meditation for years, but I just couldn’t focus. If you have ADHD or a similar thing, it can get tricky, I guess. Beyond that, being a modern age person alone makes such practices difficult, as we are so overstimulated all the time. It’s definitely good for the soul, though.
One nice thing about the focus being difficult is that in almost every meditation practice, they are pretty forgiving about the inability to focus. If something comes into your mind, you just watch it float away and then try to return, you know? It’s not like you’re f.cking it up. It happens to everybody. But yeah, it is hard.
If you could ask David Lynch a question, what would it be?
That’s a good question. I mean, I’ve read every book he ever wrote and a biography about him, so-
Room to Dream?
Yeah!
I’m reading that one right now.
It’s excellent. I love it. I read it a couple times. It’s very inspiring. He has a book of somebody interviewing him about each of his films. Lynch on Lynch. Do you know that book?
I’ve heard of it.
Really, really good.
I should get into it.
I’ve read it a couple times. If I’m ever in an art rut and if I’m kind of stuck, his thoughts take me out of it. Angela and I both read it before we started working on this, just to kind of get reimmersed. So I feel like he’s answered a lot of the questions I would have asked already. I guess I’d want to ask him something goofy.
He was a really funny man, by the way.
Incredibly funny. Hilarious. I guess I’d want to ask him where the best watermelon he ever ate was from. (both laughs)
You love watermelon, right?
Yeah, And David Lynch. So I want to smush those two things together.
Do we know if he liked watermelon?
I don’t know at all. Who knows? He might think it’s gross or he might be allergic to it. I’d find out. The question would be answered.
I want to ask this final question to finish this talk on a political note: As humanity, we are going through dark, cartoonishly fascist times that are unprecedented, at least in recent memory.
Yeah. Certain things are definitely unprecedented.
There is a video of Lynch where he says, “I am wearing dark glasses today, because I’m looking at the future, and it’s looking very bright.” That’s the one David Lynch quote that I can’t relate to right now-
(laughs hard)
How do you stay optimistic amidst all this chaos, or, are you optimistic?
No, I’m not optimistic at all. I mean, I’m continuing to work on music. I’m eating healthy and going to the gym. So I must feel a certain amount of subliminal optimism. I’m doing things to extend my life. (pauses) I am really the wrong person to ask. (both laugh) I don’t have anything motivational to say. I don’t have a positive spin on anything or a way to get through this.
Okay, one thing. In my later adult life I became very, very close to my mother. In addition to being my mom, we’ve become good friends, which I feel is very fortunate. It’s an unusual thing to have happen, and I feel very happy about that. I was talking to her similarly too about this. Particularly, the climate crisis is something that weighs on me in a negatively obsessional way, and how could it not be? But it was disrupting my life. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
I’m kind of privately religious. I don’t want to push it to anybody’s face, and I don’t think it’s good or bad to be religious. Some people are, some people aren’t, whatever, nobody’s business really. But I’m kind of lowkey, privately religious. And my mum told me, “Every day, early in the morning, think of four things that you’re thankful for.” She told me this about six months ago. And I’ve been trying to do it every day. It doesn’t obviously make any of these problems go away, or do anything to these external problems. But personally, it’s made it a lot easier or even possible for me to navigate life. None of the things that concern me have changed. In the last six months, they’ve gotten precipitously worse. But in a direct way, I can say something like that. I’m thankful for music. I’m thankful for nature. I’m thankful for my family. Usually it’ll be a different thing every time, whatever. I’m thankful for watermelons. (both laugh) In a small way, this balances out the larger horrors that we’re all infested with right now. It makes it possible to continue the almost instinctual optimism of just continuing to try to contribute to life in some not-destructive way.
There’s some impetus for being polite to somebody on the subway, or smiling at somebody or something like that. I don’t know. I feel very corny about these things because fundamentally, I’m a pretty dour and negative person. I feel very silly saying things like this, but I do believe it. (sobbing slightly) The possibility of what the earth is really is extraordinarily beautiful and extraordinarily interesting and infinitely inspiring. Sorry. Emotional. (both laugh)
It’s good to get emotional.
Although things are, as noted, unprecedentedly rotten right now, there are reasons to not give up. In five minutes, I’ll probably feel like giving up, but at this moment, I’ll try not to. (laughs)
The beauty you mentioned is legit though. There is beauty beneath the chaos.
Or above the chaos.
Or above the chaos. Yeah. Lynch was also a guy who acknowledged the evil, but chose the focus on beauty.
Yeah. I think he was a little more psychologically and emotionally developed than me. So I think he handled it a little better. But that’s true, his viewpoint was very much like that: Just keep on pushing.
You can check out Xiu Xiu’s Bandcamp profile here and Eraserhead Xiu Xiu concert tickets here.
