By Tim Jonze
A glance across the new music scene, from the stark songstress Chelsea Wolfe to the dislocated 50s pop of Dirty Beaches, shows an odd but unifying influence at work: the surreal and unsettling films of the man behind Blue Velvet and Eraserhead.
Nowhere is David Lynch's presence more keenly felt than in the music of Lana Del Ray (aka Lizzy Grant, pictured), whose track Video Games caused music critics to self-combust with delight this summer. Blurring the boundaries between old-school glamour and sleek modern pop (think Patsy Cline gone R&B), it came with a video of drunken, stumbling starlets that, like Mulholland Drive, alluded to the dark side of the Hollywood dream.
Grant is based in Los Angeles, as is Wolfe, whose skeletal post-punk is the very definition of foreboding; she even covers Norwegian black metallers Burzum. Wolfe says she is drawn to "the dark surrealism" of Lynch's films. "They're like reality to me – life is strange, and full of dark corners," she says. "Also, he talks about the special light in LA, and that was the first thing I noticed there – a bright darkness, like those days when the sun is hiding behind the clouds and you can look at it and see its circle shape perfectly."
Canadian drone popster Alex Zhang Hungtai – aka Dirty Beaches – also claims a kinship with the director. His song True Blue sounds like a lost Roy Orbison track that has been tampered with, and paints a picture of 50s America as disturbing as that in any Lynch movie. (Lynch himself revealed twisted new dimensions to Orbison's music when he recontextualised it in Blue Velvet.)
In many ways, Lynch's influence on underground musicians seems logical. The overriding mood of two recent trends – chillwave and witch house – has been one of unease, with artists such as Salem and Perfume Genius finding a sadness in things that, on the surface, seem sterile or innocent. Yet Lynch's connection to modern pop doesn't end here. Like a topsy-turvy scene from one of his own movies, the director recently embarked on a pop career of his own, starting with last year's gently pulsing electro-pop single Good Day Today. This November, he puts out Crazy Clown Time, a full-length album that features Karen O. During a Twitter interview with @guardianmusic last year, Lynch talked of his love for Captain Beefheart and the guitar. But it was a four-word answer to one question that revealed why so many musicians might connect to him right now. When asked how he viewed most pop music, Lynch replied simply: "All pop is magical."
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