There are a lot of reasons for anticipating a solo debut album from David Lynch. 1) You know that nothing in the world will sound quite like a David Lynch album. 2) He's got previous form – 'Ghost Of Love' from the Inland Empire soundtrack is an incredible piece of music, and his last venture into album recording as one half of BlueBob featured some great moments. 3) You can't name a David Lynch work with anything less than a stellar soundtrack – Twin Peaks is the obvious namedrop, but Mulholland Drive, The Straight Story and Eraserhead showcase a ridiculously diverse ear, yet one always dead-on in terms of knowing what's best.
In a lot of ways, on the amazingly titled Crazy Clown Time (!), the atmosphere and vision of David Lynch: The Filmmaker, are transferred with eery perfection into David Lynch: The Songwriter. On a number of songs this sounds exactly like how you'd imagine a David Lynch album to sound like, in a myriad of different ways. At other times, these are songs that no one could predict.
On opener and album highlight 'Pinky's Dream', you're almost made to visualise Lynch's signature highway lines shot to the robust rhythm, complete with badass Twin Peaks/Roy Orbison guitar twangs. That's without mentioning a star turn from Karen O, with her best vocal performance since 'Maps'; lyrics reminisce Alan Vega's desperate stream-of-consciousness vocal take on 'Frankie Teardrop' and she does a fine job of recreating that desperation with an emotive and terrifying real delivery, while the chorus displays her incredible range. If that's not enough, she intermittently includes Sonic-gasping-for-air whoop-whoop sounds.
Elsewhere, there's indication all round of the auteur's musical influences, where it's occasionally disappointingly predictable. Evidence of his friendship with Moby can be found in the pleasant lead electropop single, 'Good Day Today'. 'I Know' sounds like the bastard twin of 'Ghost Of Love' with an almost identical beat, key influences Roy Orbison and longtime collaborator Angelo Badalementi making their presence known, if only in spirit, throughout.
But after all, this is David Lynch, and the man is anything but disappointingly predictable; no review of the album would be complete without giving serious time dissecting batshit insane seven-minute centrepiece 'Strange And Unproductive Thinking' – perhaps the first song in history where you can deploy the word "dentalcore". With a repetitive backing track and beat, the track is a showcase for Lynch's philosophical musings, presented in autotune. The song touches many bases, none more interesting and memorable than the world of dentistry, sample lyric: “the remarkable idea of a world free of tooth decay and all other problems associated with the teeth, tongue or oral cavity”. It's the closest the man has ever come to self-parody, and it sounds what an unfunny YouTube parody channel would attempt at a fake David Lynch song, but it's so endearingly unique, so endearingly Lynch, that it's difficult not to enjoy it on some level – even if that appreciation doesn't survive repeated listens.
Crazy Clown Time sounds incredible throughout, Lynch's unrivalled eye for atmosphere and texture in the film world not actually far behind in the field of music. But, while his voice is strong at certain points, it's unendurable over a seven-minute song - let alone the majority of an album clocking in at over an hour - even if it is put through a number of effects. You can't help but feel that after utilising Karen O's voice in such a way at the start of the album it would be far more effective if he took influence from one of his favourite bands, This Mortal Coil, acting almost like an Ivo Watts-Russell leader, composer and curator - using his own voice occasionally, but collaborating with a number of different vocalists against his own compositions, which are rarely anything but stellar.