Bluer than velvet was the night

To anyone familiar with David Lynch’s auteurist filmography, his first full-length release as a solo musician should feel familiar.

Like the director’s work on such surrealist masterpieces as “Blue Velvet” and “Inland Empire,” “Crazy Clown Time” is at once dreamlike and terrifyingly real, its narrators unreliable and its themes esoteric.

Also like much of his work as a filmmaker, Lynch’s performances on the album operate just on the fringe of the mainstream. Just as “Twin Peaks” became a primetime phenomenon in 1990, it’s easy to imagine a dance club (perhaps even Lynch’s own Club Silencio in Paris) pulsing with the 1980s-inspired strains of “Good Day Today” or the Karen O-fronted weirdness of “Pinky’s Dream.”

Lynch also shines when he breaks out of the pop music mold altogether. The robotic voice that contemplates the link between dental health and mental health on “Strange and Unproductive Thinking” and the innocent youth describing a birthday party gone wrong on the genre-bending title track are just as effective as the album’s more conventional moments.

It’s a testament to Lynch’s flexibility as a songwriter and singer that this is true, and after 40 years of contributing to his own film soundtracks, it’s nice to finally have one cohesive musical work from him — however cohesive a David Lynch work can actually be.