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Aug 02, 2024 Web Exclusive By Daniel Gard’ner

When you enter the world of David Lynch you’re never quite sure what the rules are. Navigating his haunting dreamscapes and shifting realities often necessitates a total surrender of any preconceived logic. On his spellbinding new record with Texas-born singer Chrystabell, Cellophane Memories, the cinematic visionary again conjures a shadowy, immersive terrain of endless mystery.

Chrystabell first made an impact in the Lynchian universe with a head-turning role in Twin Peaks: The Return. On Cellophane Memories she pairs her smoky croon with a series of eerie, abstract arrangements on a record that feels like a dark vision slowly revealing itself. In the singer’s words, the album holds “many doors that are left open to wonder, wander and get turned around in.” Indeed, the further you sink into the record’s opaque depths, the less you feel like you know.

Chrystabell’s restrained vocals are the calm center of the record, her voice frequently multi-tracked and folded in on itself like an intricately woven braid. The method blurs most of the lyrics out of focus or garbles them in a kind of reverse-speak. Lynch has used this technique before (see Twin Peaks again) and the queasy dread it provokes is the same here. But the ghostly, beautifully assembled instrumentation of these songs elicits more complex emotions, whether it’s the cavernous percussion and glistening tremolo guitar that drape “The Answers to the Questions” in a swampy vapour, or the gentle swell of organ that frames “With Small Animals” like a pale sky. The record often seems to reach for a kind of spiritual transcendence, but any sense of serenity is constantly undercut by a lurking sense of dread.

This dichotomy is central to the album’s power. Like a lot of Lynch’s work, it stands at the precipice of blissful transformation and unknowable darkness. With Chrystabell as a formidable new ally, it’s a dimension he’s still exploring. (www.chrystabell.com)

Author rating: 8.5/10