Why The New Twin Peaks Soundtrack Is Fire (Walk With Me)

  • Why The New Twin Peaks Soundtrack Is Fire (Walk With Me)
    POSTED


    Christian Barker 

    When it hit our chunky non-flatscreen sets back in 1992, Twin Peaks wasn’t just a television storytelling game changer — it was also a huge musical moment. The surreal, macabre series was unlike anything that’d been seen on TV before. The show’s soundtrack thought way outside the (idiot) box, too.

     

    Twin Peaks’ creator David Lynch first won underground props in the late ’70s with the bizarre art-house horror flick Eraserhead, and found a mainstream audience via 1980’s leftfield yet surprisingly successful The Elephant Man. After working with Angelo Badalamenti on his 1986 neo-noir classic, Blue Velvet, the auteur and the composer teamed up once again in 1989 when Lynch got the green light to produce his own television show — the story of murder, mystery, midgets, mystical psychedelic visions and “damn good coffee” in the town of Twin Peaks, situated in woody, wet’n’wild northwestern USA.

      

    When against all odds the series became a huge hit (1990’s highest-rated, in fact), Brooklyn-bred musician Badalamenti’s score — including a few standout tunes featuring the dreamy vocals of Julee Cruise — sold gold and picked up a best pop instrumental Grammy. This came as quite the surprise, considering that the music was impossible to categorise, making it difficult to slot in on boring, heavily formatted American radio. Fitting no particular genre, it was eccentric, eclectic. “The thing about Twin Peaks’ music is it runs the gamut of styles,” Badalamenti told Rolling Stone a few years back. “It also incorporates pop, blues, some country, soft rock, film noir — no question about that — nightmarish stuff.” Not exactly radio-friendly fare, then. But somehow…

     

    Cruise was still working as a waitress when her tune ‘Falling’ became a major hit, thanks to the instrumental’s use as Twin Peaks’ main theme. Only months earlier, the singer’s management and lawyers had advised her to give up on music, and her friends had written off the delicate, hypnotic synth-pop she’d laid down in collaboration with Lynch and Badalamenti as wishy-washy “white wine Muzak.” (Gee, thanks for the feedback, ‘friends’.)

     

    Confounding the cloth-eared naysayers and generic radio suckers, Twin Peaks’ tunes struck a serious chord with the viewing (and listening) public. The moody, jazzy, snappy, synthy, and at turns, sinister and jarring sounds created for the show — reflecting its visual beauty undercut with violence and darkness — have proven hugely influential over the past two-and-a-half decades. Musicians as disparate as thrash-metalists Anthrax, mournful-pop songstress Lana Del Ray, humble multihyphenate Kanye West, Baltimore baladeers Beach House, and (last but certainly not least) ad-man’s fave Moby all owe Badalamenti’s soundtrack an enormous debt.

    You can also clearly draw a direct line from Twin Peaks to the music heard in recent Netflix phenomenon Stranger Things, where crisp, atmospheric synthesiser-driven rhythms can fast take a detour into moody, menacing territory. The big difference being, where Stranger Things’ soundtrack is deliberately retro-futurist (that is, it sounds like what people in the 1980s thought 2001 would sound like), Twin Peaks’ is better described as the flipside: forward-thinking old-school. Same goes for the music you’ll hear on the series’ 21st century continuation.

     

    Unless you’ve been living under a rock (or denied access to the interwebs — in which case, how the heck are you reading this?), you’ll know that Twin Peaks recently returned with an 18-part third ‘Limited Event’ series, picking up 25 years on from the two original seasons. Lynch has once again collaborated with Badalamenti, whose Twin Peaks Theme remains the show’s intro. But new music from the maestro (who also worked on scores for Lynch’s movies Mulholland Drive, Wild at Heart and Lost Highway — as well as, incongruously, the decidedly non-Lynchian National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation) doesn’t appear in its full glory until episode six of the new production, when it crops up during a particularly messed-up moment. (No spoilers here, folks. But… hey, just watch and weep.)

     

    Unlike its hit 1990 predecessor, Badalamenti doesn’t ‘own’ the score to Twin Peaks’ return, which also features pieces from, among others, Johnny Jewel, Krzysztof Penderecki, Dean Hurley and David Lynch (the director himself being an accomplished musician, with two noteworthy LPs to his credit). A score album including all these will be released in September, in tandem with another set entitled ‘Music From the Limited Event Series’, which will feature the outfits left-of-centre aficionado Lynch has chosen to either appear performing live in the show, or contribute incidental music.

     

    Bands that have taken to the stage at the Bang Bang Bar to entertain Twin Peaks’ townspeople in episodes of the Limited Event Series screened to date include Portland synth-mongers Chromatics, folksy Americana combo The Cactus Blossoms, Brooklyn indie trio Au Revoir Simone, dirty nouveau blues dealers Trouble (whose lineup takes in the director’s son, Riley Lynch), ethereal chanteuse Sharon Van Etten, noisy ’90s snarlers Nine Inch Nails, and Scots electronica purveyor Hudson Mohawke. Early 1960s selections from Booker T and the MGs, The Platters, and Paris Sisters have also made an aural appearance.

    More soundtrack inclusions will be revealed as subsequent episodes screen. As per usual with David Lynch, it’s all about slowly peeling back what lies below the surface. Which is generally something delightfully fucked up. 

     

    The Twin Peaks soundtrack is out this Friday. Catch a pre-order here

     

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Christian Barker 

When it hit our chunky non-flatscreen sets back in 1992, Twin Peaks wasn’t just a television storytelling game changer — it was also a huge musical moment. The surreal, macabre series was unlike anything that’d been seen on TV before. The show’s soundtrack thought way outside the (idiot) box, too.

 

Twin Peaks’ creator David Lynch first won underground props in the late ’70s with the bizarre art-house horror flick Eraserhead, and found a mainstream audience via 1980’s leftfield yet surprisingly successful The Elephant Man. After working with Angelo Badalamenti on his 1986 neo-noir classic, Blue Velvet, the auteur and the composer teamed up once again in 1989 when Lynch got the green light to produce his own television show — the story of murder, mystery, midgets, mystical psychedelic visions and “damn good coffee” in the town of Twin Peaks, situated in woody, wet’n’wild northwestern USA.

  

When against all odds the series became a huge hit (1990’s highest-rated, in fact), Brooklyn-bred musician Badalamenti’s score — including a few standout tunes featuring the dreamy vocals of Julee Cruise — sold gold and picked up a best pop instrumental Grammy. This came as quite the surprise, considering that the music was impossible to categorise, making it difficult to slot in on boring, heavily formatted American radio. Fitting no particular genre, it was eccentric, eclectic. “The thing about Twin Peaks’ music is it runs the gamut of styles,” Badalamenti told Rolling Stone a few years back. “It also incorporates pop, blues, some country, soft rock, film noir — no question about that — nightmarish stuff.” Not exactly radio-friendly fare, then. But somehow…

 

Cruise was still working as a waitress when her tune ‘Falling’ became a major hit, thanks to the instrumental’s use as Twin Peaks’ main theme. Only months earlier, the singer’s management and lawyers had advised her to give up on music, and her friends had written off the delicate, hypnotic synth-pop she’d laid down in collaboration with Lynch and Badalamenti as wishy-washy “white wine Muzak.” (Gee, thanks for the feedback, ‘friends’.)

 

Confounding the cloth-eared naysayers and generic radio suckers, Twin Peaks’ tunes struck a serious chord with the viewing (and listening) public. The moody, jazzy, snappy, synthy, and at turns, sinister and jarring sounds created for the show — reflecting its visual beauty undercut with violence and darkness — have proven hugely influential over the past two-and-a-half decades. Musicians as disparate as thrash-metalists Anthrax, mournful-pop songstress Lana Del Ray, humble multihyphenate Kanye West, Baltimore baladeers Beach House, and (last but certainly not least) ad-man’s fave Moby all owe Badalamenti’s soundtrack an enormous debt.

You can also clearly draw a direct line from Twin Peaks to the music heard in recent Netflix phenomenon Stranger Things, where crisp, atmospheric synthesiser-driven rhythms can fast take a detour into moody, menacing territory. The big difference being, where Stranger Things’ soundtrack is deliberately retro-futurist (that is, it sounds like what people in the 1980s thought 2001 would sound like), Twin Peaks’ is better described as the flipside: forward-thinking old-school. Same goes for the music you’ll hear on the series’ 21st century continuation.

 

Unless you’ve been living under a rock (or denied access to the interwebs — in which case, how the heck are you reading this?), you’ll know that Twin Peaks recently returned with an 18-part third ‘Limited Event’ series, picking up 25 years on from the two original seasons. Lynch has once again collaborated with Badalamenti, whose Twin Peaks Theme remains the show’s intro. But new music from the maestro (who also worked on scores for Lynch’s movies Mulholland Drive, Wild at Heart and Lost Highway — as well as, incongruously, the decidedly non-Lynchian National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation) doesn’t appear in its full glory until episode six of the new production, when it crops up during a particularly messed-up moment. (No spoilers here, folks. But… hey, just watch and weep.)

 

Unlike its hit 1990 predecessor, Badalamenti doesn’t ‘own’ the score to Twin Peaks’ return, which also features pieces from, among others, Johnny Jewel, Krzysztof Penderecki, Dean Hurley and David Lynch (the director himself being an accomplished musician, with two noteworthy LPs to his credit). A score album including all these will be released in September, in tandem with another set entitled ‘Music From the Limited Event Series’, which will feature the outfits left-of-centre aficionado Lynch has chosen to either appear performing live in the show, or contribute incidental music.

 

Bands that have taken to the stage at the Bang Bang Bar to entertain Twin Peaks’ townspeople in episodes of the Limited Event Series screened to date include Portland synth-mongers Chromatics, folksy Americana combo The Cactus Blossoms, Brooklyn indie trio Au Revoir Simone, dirty nouveau blues dealers Trouble (whose lineup takes in the director’s son, Riley Lynch), ethereal chanteuse Sharon Van Etten, noisy ’90s snarlers Nine Inch Nails, and Scots electronica purveyor Hudson Mohawke. Early 1960s selections from Booker T and the MGs, The Platters, and Paris Sisters have also made an aural appearance.

More soundtrack inclusions will be revealed as subsequent episodes screen. As per usual with David Lynch, it’s all about slowly peeling back what lies below the surface. Which is generally something delightfully fucked up. 

 

The Twin Peaks soundtrack is out this Friday. Catch a pre-order here

 

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