Well, we start off in familiar territory with the sultry, surfy rumbler of Pinky’s Dream, Karen O’s impassioned vocals imploring "Pinky" to "watch the road" as claustrophobic drums clatter against shimmering guitars, seemingly the aural distillation of many themes in his visual opera. From here on in however, things veer off towards a slightly less obvious sonic aesthetic with Lynch’s own nasal, vocoded vocals dominating proceedings over pulsating beats and bobs. The music draws parallels with Nine Inch Nails' mellower moments, and this is never more so than on Strange and Unproductive Thinking and She Rise Up. Of all the tracks here contained, The Night Bell With Lightening most resembles the Twin Peaks soundtrack, and is questionably a reworking of Badalamenti’s The Bookhouse Boys, given its tremolo-heavy guitars and loungey drums. Crazy Clown Time, the eponymous Lynchpin of the album, draws from the Badalamenti aesthetic once again with its pounding rhythms and droning guitars as Lynch squeals of how "Timmy jumped all around so high", an indiscernible female voice moaning in the background all the while. Stone’s Gone Up is the album’s most anthemic track, returning to the ebb and flow of surf guitars although this time with a beat stolen from The Human League’s Don’t You Want Me Baby caught in its undertow. This is all offset by his own oppressive vocals and, ending in a hail of blaring sirens, it's a contender for the record's strongest instance.
Lyrically this record is not going to make you consider the meaning of life - Lynch mumbles almost incoherently of seeing "you with another man" in Football Game; whispers about a "dark night of rain" on Noah’s Arc; and declares how he has "a truck and a single bed" during These Are My Friends. Yet that’s not the point and never has been when considering any of his varied works. Lynch’s ramblings probably only make sense to he himself, and it is the overall effect that is created that here overrides all.
Rating an album such as this is almost impossible, idle, aimless considering the fact that Lynch doesn’t seem to care what anyone thinks of him. There's probably something for Lynch buffs and non-fans alike here and most of these songs would fit seamlessly into any of his films, or indeed into Twin Peaks. If any other artist released an album like this people might label it a whimsical, semi-experimental release yet when it comes to David Lynch, it's probably quite safe to say that this is what a regular day sounds like in his caffeine and nicotine-driven mind. Whatever this record may or may not be, it certainly doesn't sound like an album made by a man who will turn 66 in January.
Ed Livingstone.
