Week 19 of 52 albums in a year
Chrystabell and David Lynch - Cellophane Memories
Hey everyone.
This week I dug out something that's been on the 'to listen' list since the start of the year when I heard of his passing. It's Cellophane Memories by Chrystabell and David Lynch.
If you've never heard of David Lynch, he's a film director who made some really eerie films and TV shows mainly during the 80's - early 2000's. I first heard of him through an interview with The Mars Volta where they spoke about the impact Twin Peaks had on their music. It was quite an old TV show even then, having been made in the early 90's, but they made a third season in 2017, which Lynch also directed (and I have not seen. Shame on me).
David Lynch's films are often strange. It's not an uncommon experience to watch something like Blue Velvet or Mulholland Drive and go... what the fuck did I just watch? The stories are often confusing, weird, and dream like, with dark elements and themes.
It should come as no surprise then that his last album Cellophane Memories, made with Chrystabell and released 5 months before his death, is also confusing, dark, and strange. It's like listening to poetry in a dream but only remembering snippets of what was said when you wake up. The vocals are often drenched in reverb, have two different sentences or melodies overlapping, and at times have been reversed.
Musically, there's next to no rhythm on the album, apart from one song called The Answers To The Questions. It's probably one of my favourites on the album, but even that word is a stretch. Perhaps I should say it's one of the songs I vaguely remember.
I remember parts of songs. You Know The Rest is essentially just a guitar with reverb and tremolo playing slowly, but you can clearly hear the line 'for dinner it was meat and potatoes' around 1:30 in the song. Dance Of Light starts off with the line 'the air was alive' and then turns into more ambient mush, with synths and scattered vocal melodies. Reflections in a Blade sounds good, with a really evil, dark synth sound. It's maybe one of the best songs on the album for mood, although the last song on the album, Sublime Eternal Love was a song I enjoyed that was almost the opposite in terms of mood, being gentle and light.
As you can probably guess from this scattered review, I didn't love this album. I wanted to like it. I wanted to give it enough listens so it made some kind of sense. I wanted to say that it grew on me.
Truth is, that as I listened to it for maybe the 20th time, I still couldn't really tell many songs from one another, found the vocals to be generally more distracting than enjoyable, and found the whole thing a bit lackluster. Maybe I'm in the wrong headspace for this, coming in after Opeth. Maybe the things I enjoyed in my early 20's don't have the same appeal for me these days. Maybe I just don't 'get' it, although I'd say that I have a pretty open musical palate and often enjoy dark ambient music. Whatever it is, I gave it a go, but it's just not for me.
I'd give this 1 finger out of 5. If David Lynch hadn't been attached to it and it was made by an unknown indie artist, I doubt I'd have given it more than the minimum 5 listens. I keep second guessing myself, saying no, maybe it's worth another finger, there's a couple of songs I don't hate... but then I think no, that's not fair. Take away the name attached to this album and it's just not my thing. I could easily never listen to this album again.
Although if there was a version without lyrics, I'd probably give that a go.
The year so far: