If I had counted the number of artists who have cited David Lynch as an inspiration, I would have had a very long list! Isn’t Lynchian a new adjective to describe a certain new pop? The Lana Del Rey type knows it too well. Lynch’s phantasmagoric movies are everyone’s favorite because they leave you totally perplex, an uneasy ambiance sweats through each scene, and you have no choice but to enter Lynch’s unique, dark weird world.
But, according to the Independent, David Lynch may never make another movie again, he is just too busy making music! He is actually ready to release his second album on July 25th, the follow-up to his 2011 ‘Crazy Clown Time’, and he already has made available two songs, a collaboration with Lykke Li, the lovely and chilling ‘I’m Waiting Here’, a long road trip à la Twin Peaks with Li’s pure voice, and we now can listen to this second one, ‘Star Dream Girl’, a stomping crazy blues. A lot of people have noted the Dylan connection (whom Lynch loves), but the song also made me think immediately about another artist who has never mentioned Lynch to my knowledge: Tom Waits. Just listen to it below, it’s cranky and chaotic like an old muddy road trip to the South, or… is it a surf ride as Lynch explained when he talked about the song genesis?
‘After I moved away from Boise, Idaho, I came back in the summer of ’61. Around that time, Jerry Lee Lewis was supposed to play at this big club in the Sagebrush Desert — I think it was called the Miramar. Back then, these big events would catch people’s imaginations. They would take their motorcycles or hot rods to these remote places to see some star. So we all drove out to this place, but Jerry never showed up and people were really pissed off. ‘Star Dream Girl’ has that same kind of charisma. People can’t wait to see her and come from miles around…The lyrics came to me all at once, but there was no music yet. Then one night, Dean (Hurley) was playing guitar in the studio and I was egging him on when he caught a wave like the surfers out in Hawaii. He was in the tunnel man…and the lyrics married with that ride’.
I actually find the song very catchy, a sort of weird Americana that could only have come from David Lynch’s brain,… or Tom Waits’.