When David Lynch announced that he was to release an album the world collectively shat it’s pants. “Finally!” they cried, “the man who singlehandedly changed 21st century popular culture is to bear his soul through music! Oh happy days!” And then came Good Day Today, a slice of grim electro pop delivering it’s fucked up sermon through gun noises and a vocoder. Tragically, it appears that it was a red herring, a gorgeous red herring that promised so much. Crazy Clown Time is by no stretch an easy album nor is it in anyway rewarding for it. Though Lynch has a history for being deliberately difficult and obtuse, the idiosyncrasies that litter the record are needlessly wacky and devoid of any real depth. Case in point: the seven and half minute spoken word piece Strange and Unproductive Thinking, Lynch (again speaking through a vocoder) rambles about higher beings, enlightenment, the future and the link between the “sub-conscious and the supe- conscious” minds until the message shifts into a lecture regarding the role of good dental hygiene in the progression of society and humanity. Sure, on paper it sounds a quirky interlude from everyone’s favourite fucked up sexagenarian, but when in reality it’s a plodding, lifeless dirge that manages the mean feat of daring the audience to continue whilst simultaneously boring them to death.
Musically, it’s a painfully one-note affair. Every track (save for Good Day Today, a beacon of light that is extinguished quickly by it’s placing second in the tracklist) sits uncomfortably on a bed of jazz drums and meandering slide guitars who never change drastically in pitch between tracks. Pretentious to the point of parody, it is not only a blemish on the near-spotless career of one of the world’s most fearless auteurs, it’s a hideous sign that maybe, just maybe, Lynch might just be losing his edge.
4/10
By Ned Powley
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