There’s a clip going around at the moment in which lauded composer Angelo Badalamenti talks through how he and his longtime collaborator David Lynch dreamt up one of the themes that plays in Twin Peaks, the arthouse soap opera oddity that might well be TV’s finest hour. Seated at a keyboard, Badalamenti explains the creative process to the camera, his eyes occasionally clamping shut as he tenses into what looks like absolute ecstasy.
The key to the unbearably wholesome clip is the joy of it all – the kind of unfettered joy that was distinctly lacking from American indie band Xiu Xiu’s attempt to cover Badalamenti’s score in full at Carriageworks last week. In fact, their show was such a colossal, unbearable trainwreck that it wasn’t simply cringeworthily overwrought; it was actively insulting, both to the audience and the source material it intended to honour.
Things started bad and got worse. Xiu Xiu, a collection of indie electro wailers led by the insufferable Jamie Stewart, are the kind of band that smirk over Twitter about their refusal to greet or thank their audience; a band that have courted controversy for their objectification of black bodies, and their smug refusal to engage with critics.
So it’s entirely in character that they opened the show with five uninterrupted minutes of a drum loop playing the same 10-second long sequence, and entirely in character that they ended it with what could be best described as a primary school production of Twin Peaks, as Stewart barked the novelty song ‘Mairzy Doats’ while extracts from Laura Palmer’s diary were read in a halting American accent.
It was like watching someone methodically cake the Mona Lisa in human shit.
And in between those two bookends was a solid hour of unbearable, unlistenable garbage, as the band layered Badalamenti’s score with reverb, screeching and insipid, lifeless gimmicks. It was like watching someone methodically cake the Mona Lisa in human shit; like gazing on, unable to intervene, as the Bayeux tapestry was unpicked, thread by thread.
‘Cause here’s the thing: David Lynch isn’t weird for the sake of being weird, and he doesn’t make art that actively seeks to repel audience attention. His work – Twin Peaks included – is driven by an all-encompassing respect for its viewers; by the desire to include. That Stewart and his gang of art school snobs didn’t realise that – that they arrogantly assumed good art should take effort, that it should be indistinguishable from work – speaks volumes about both their unbearable shortcomings, and the grace of Badalamenti’s still unbowed and unbroken score.
Xiu Xiu’s performance of The Music Of Twin Peaks went down at Carriageworks on Thursday June 29.
