David Lynch
Crazy Clown Time
Sunday Best Recordings/PIAS America
David Lynch exhibits all the same attributes as a “non-musician” as he does as a film director. His debut Crazy Clown Time is dark, mysterious, full of dread and foreboding, just like Blue Velvet or Wild at Heart. Lynch calls the music “modern blues,” but it is unlikely blues ever sounded like this, unless performed by Kraftwerk. Sonically the record owes quite a lot to Krautrock, Eno, and Aphex Twin, but lyrically it’s all Lynch. Take “Pinky’s Dream,” the opener. Sung by Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, it sounds like an outline for a future Lynch film – “Please, Pinky watch the road” O intones against the harrowing music – “Are you laughing/ Or crying?” Or the protagonist of “Football Game” who hopes the object of his obsession “can run fast” after being seen with another man. Unsettling stuff, but you’d expect nothing else from Lynch. “The Night Bell with Lightning” sounds like a lost bit of Twin Peaks score, drawing heavily on his work with Angelo Badalamenti.
Once this brilliant album concludes, the listener isn’t quite sure exactly what he’s heard. The images Crazy Clown Time conjures up are oft times grisly and desperate – much like the man’s films. Consider it the ear in the grass of Blue Velvet – and we know what fun that was, right?
David Lynch: http://davidlynch.com
