You can now listen to Twin Peaks: Season Two Music And More on CD for a limited time.
David Lynch is a film and television director by trade, but I’d argue that his contributions to pop culture extend beyond the visual. A Lynch production such as the show Twin Peaks, which premiered on ABC in 1990 as both a twisted, subversive soap opera and a quirky character study, was always about the sensory experience above all. Visceral reactions were sometimes as important — if not more important — than the post-viewing analysis.
Much of the show’s ability to incite such an immediate emotional response — fear, delight or both at the same time — can be attributed to Angelo Badalamenti’s soundtrack. The music clings to Lynch’s narrative in the same irreplaceable way that Krzysztof Penderecki’s demented strings echo throughout the empty Overlook Hotel in The Shining.
Lynch’s Twin Peaks characters are idiosyncratic in their own special ways — from the wily, wide-eyed Agent Cooper, who’s in every episode, to the enigmatic, sparsely appearing Giant who famously declares “It is happening again” during the show’s violent turning point in the second season. Yet Badalamenti’s score is arguably the most vital “figure” on Twin Peaksbecause it reaches us on a subconscious level, messing with our heads in ways even the most nuanced acting can’t.
Listening to the soundtrack detached from the show (which you can now do thanks to the limited release of Twin Peaks: Season Two Music And More on CD), it’s apparent Badalamenti’s music doesn’t just act as a sonic supplement to Lynch’s visual weirdness. It also serves as a memory vessel for many of the show’s iconic images and sequences, allowing you to relive Twin Peaks in a new, self-mediated light.
Alfred Hitchcock believed that in film, if more is left to the imagination, the resulting product is always more frightening than what could be portrayed on screen. For instance, “Laura’s Dark Boogie” might be playing while Cooper enters the utterly terrifying Black Lodge on the series finale of Twin Peaks. But the Black Lodge you recreate in your own mind while listening to the same song on its own is unsettling in a different, equally powerful way, which is a testament to the music’s ability to be as vivid as Lynch’s actual images.
Twin Peaks’ lasting legacy may result from Lynch’s juxtaposition of idyllic rural life with the pure evil that lurks just below the surface, a duality that made the show feel visceral and alive. However, he owes much of the credit to Badalamenti, whose indispensable use of sound took that duality and made it a true, timeless nightmare.
