Send in the Crazy Clowns
There was never a more apt album title than that of visionary filmmaker David Lynch’s recent debut, Crazy Clown Time, released this month. Like his films, this intriguing collection is an abstract meditation with an overriding feel of strangeness and impending, mysterious disaster – perhaps this time at an old fun fair that is now used as an orgy spot for ravers. Like them too, it is impossible to categorise.
It switches between heavy trance tracks, such as lead single “Good Day Today” and somnolent, bluesy pieces like “Football Game,” highly reminiscent of both Lynch’s protégé Chris Isaak and the scores to his own films. The record opens with upbeat, twangy guitar track “Pinky’s Dream,” breathily whispered into a vague narrative tale by Yeah Yeah Yeah’s front woman Karen O. This could easily be on the soundtrack to Lost Highway or Wild At Heart.
The title track is calmer in pace but stranger in sound and sentiment; brimming with female sex noises and lyrics such as, “Pour the beer over Sally … screamed so loud he spit … on fire …” It gives the impression of recalling a troubling dream on waking, complete with a lilting guitar riff that sounds as if it has been reversed and looped to further engage you in this world of distortions.
Mostly the tracks are worded by Lynch’s distant, echoing voice like spoken-word eulogies to childhood, dreams, memories and other indefinable scenarios. Certainly they evoke emotion – although it is impossible to identify exactly what they are or from where he has pulled them from inside you. This is his genius as a filmmaker and it is not lost in his music, like so many actors’ pop forays. He has created a space for you as a listener to enter and try to decipher.
If you heard this on a come down you would either have a series of life-altering visions involving burning houses, writhing hookers in roadside motels, clowns, the woman you once loved and other spectres looming from the darkness. Or you would kill yourself. Ultimately it is exactly what you might expect from Lynch, but still it surprises and, in its very unique way, delights. Just don’t listen to it alone.
[rating:2.5]
Download: “Pinky’s Dream,” “Football Game,” “She Rise Up.”
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Release date: 8th Nov 2011, Play It Again Sam
