New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Cellophane Memories, the new album from the musician and director, will be released on August 2. As teased by David Lynch on his X account last month, something has come along to see and hear.
Chrystabell and David Lynch have shared their first single "Sublime Eternal Love," from the upcoming album Cellophane Memories out August 2nd via Sacred Bones Records. The single arrives with a striking accompanying video directed by David Lynch.
Almost spiritual in tone and sentiment, lush synth organs envelope the listener in an emotional and celestial ascendant musical atmosphere. Chrystabell's vocal lines overlap and intertwine, creating a sonic mirage of gentle, warm vocals - so when you can catch a singular vocal, the lyrics are that much more poignant: "He fell down crying...calling out he cried...cried for understanding...and the noise turned to music." The feeling of the song draws you in and carries you, steady in its simple yet deeply moving inflection.
Artistically minimalistic and hypnotically compelling, the video for "Sublime Eternal Love" almost reflects an exoneration from a benevolent higher power and a reverence for the message of love and hope that it brings. In a dark room, strobe lights illuminate Chrystabell's likeness, smiling at the viewer. She is projected as three different versions of herself in the same frame, each singing a different line and harmonizing with the other two. Near the end of the video, gray clouds sweep swiftly past, mirroring the trance-like quality in the visuals and music.
The origin of Chrystabell and David Lynch's album Cellophane Memories comes from a vision that David experienced during a nighttime walk through a forest of tall trees, over the tops of which he saw a bright light. As he recalls it, the light became the lilt of Chrystabell's voice and revealed a secret to him. It is from these mysterious convergences of light and sound, day and night, starry sky and black forest that Chrystabell and David's collaboration has continued to blossom.
Both artists are from the purlieus, and their work has always expressed a life outside of the world's center. The Texas-born singer's voice is inspired by sultry southern breezes and daydreams from a forest clearing. The Montana filmmaker's eye is like a movie projector flickering in the forest dark. Together, they produced two previous records and collaborated on Twin Peaks: The Return in which Chrystabell played the role of Agent Tammy Preston. For Cellophane Memories, the two have traveled through different portals. In Chrystabell's words, the album contains "many doors that are left open to wonder, wander and get turned around in." "It's like mood music," she says, "not that it creates mood, but more that it reflects your own."
Fittingly, many of the songs on Cellophane Memories are set in fairytale forests, mountain peaks, swimming holes, crepuscular highways and darkened bedrooms. These are the abodes of both loneliness and romance, the sorts of sublime landscapes where people often travel alone in search of a wayward lover. But they are also shapeless atmospheres—of color, weather and breath: blue and white skies, red roses, darkening thunderheads, swirling winds and summer perfumes, which quickly immerse the traveler in the supernatural sensations of other worlds.
Elisions in time reappear over and over within Chrystabell's vocals, which emerge and dissolve and loop back in layers of harmony and history. They are mantled by David's, and late composer Angelo Badalamenti's, orchestra of waldeinsamkeit-inspired strings, oneiric guitar glissandi and clouds of reverb, whose melodies are like the sensation of time pausing for a first kiss.
As with much of Chrystabell and David's work from the past, Cellophane Memories returns us to a central question: what is a mystery? Alas, the riddle remains unanswered. But all mystery contains slivers of those conceits and feelings described above: the departing and the coming-back, the landscape, atmosphere and breath, the topsy-turvy mechanisms of time, memories of the bygone, a distant light radiating from darkness, music within silence, love.
To experience this album is to see the first faint glimmers of a mystery that occurred in a midnight forest long ago and to hear the sound of a voice that inspired love's return from the dark.
Chrystabell and David Lynch / Cellophane Memories Tracklisting:
1. She Knew
2. The Sky Falls
3. You Know The Rest
4. So Much Love
5. Two Lovers Kiss
6. The Answers to the Questions
7. With Small Animals
8. Reflections in a Blade
9. Dance of Light
10. Sublime Eternal Love
