"Crazy Clown Time," released on Nov. 7, is the first solo album by the 65?year?old filmmaker David Lynch. Lynch's trademark dark wit and esoteric creepiness shine through in many of the atmospheric tracks. His music evokes the complex and precise sound design evident in many of his films.
Lynch has never limited his artistic scope to films, producing visual art, comics and even collaborating with musicians since the late '80s, so a solo album does not seem like a surprising next step. What is surprising, however, is how in?step many tracks seem with contemporary sounds.
One reason Lynch's films are so haunting and unique - and often at odds with prevailing trends - is his ability to incorporate stylistic aspects of many past and present genres. This is certainly evident on "Crazy Clown Time," which engages elements of '60s cinematic surf, '80s rock and modern electronic music.
The album opens strongly with "Pinky's Dream," which features the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' vocalist, Karen O. Distant guitars bounce around within a wide?open but driving drumbeat. Karen O's vocals enter with the plea: "Please, Pinky, watch the road," plugging us immediately into a classic Lynchian scene of fast cars on the highway at night. At times, "Pinky's Dream" features echoes of Angelo Badalamenti's iconic score for Lynch's televsion show "Twin Peaks" (1990?1991) and of the soundtrack to his 1997 film "Lost Highway," which featured heavyweights of late '90s industrial and alternative rock. Like "Pinky's," the strongest songs on "Crazy Clown Time" have a cinematic quality, offering frames and scenes from stories, yet follow traditional song structure.
"Pinky's" is followed by the album's single, "Good Day Today." The track offers steady beats and underwater synths reminiscent of recent sounds by artists such as Washed Out; the sound is often characterized as "chillwave." Lynch's own voice enters the mix for the first time, filtered through a reedy vocoder and taking on the quality of a "robot voice" that calls Daft Punk to mind. The track is strong overall, if somewhat repetitive.
The use of the vocoder and vocal augmentation pervade the album. Lynch manipulates his voice to infuse different tracks with particular moods or characters. In disguising his voice, he also seems to background himself; his persona fades in the service of the idea of the song.
Lyrically, much of the album touches on common Lynch themes. On "Football Game," Lynch tells the story of a spurned lover who sees his partner at a football game with another man. Against distorted and out?of?tune guitars, Lynch's near?unintelligible voice seems to illuminate the sinister and the bizarre in the context of average America.
The title track finds Lynch singing in a childish voice against more spooky guitars, trashy Tom Waits?esque drums and samples of a woman's pleasure moans. Lynch narrates a bizarre backyard scene with moments like: "Suzy, she ripped her shirt off completely.../ Then he poured beer all over Sally." The album is pervaded by this dichotomy between the mundane and the deeply perverse and disturbing. Even on weaker tracks, Lynch's lyrics shine with the same perplexing resonance as his scripts.
"Strange and Unproductive Thinking" finds a computerized Lynch philosophizing over a mostly repetitive kick?and?snare and a simple bassline. While Lynch manages to showcase his own command of sophisticated language and elucidate some of the complex ideas also at work in his films, the musical elements of the track leave the listener wanting more. From the beginning, the track has momentum; it seems to be cooking along towards some grand explosion of sound, yet this moment of release is never reached.
This is a common problem with the album. Many tracks succeed in creating the kind of slow, stewing tension that makes Lynch's films so gripping to watch, yet they rarely open up to the kind of controlled chaos that is evident in the most terrifying moments of his film work.
"Crazy Clown Time's" strongest tracks, like "Pinky's Dream," are the most conventional. "Stone's Gone Up" is a standout with a surprisingly catchy chorus. "These Are My Friends," a poignant commentary on loneliness and consumerism, moves along at the same heavy tempo as certain weaker songs, but the song is strong because of the presence of real melody in Lynch's vocals and in the instrumentation.
"Crazy Clown Time" is certainly a complex and interesting album, but at times, Lynch's propensity toward atmosphere and ideas seems to be privileged over listenability. Like his films, the album can feel drawn out and slow, confusing and contradictory. The crucial difference is that Lynch does not have the same creative command of music as he does over film. A slow moment in a Lynch film may be as rich as an action scene, but on this album, many of the slower moments are simply dull.
