Despite a career that stretches back a half-century, Angelo Badalamenti’s arrangements for the likes of Nina Simone and Shirley Bassey as well as his soundtracks for A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist, and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation never quite haunted the collective memory. (That is to say nothing of his forgotten turn at bouncy country music.) Instead, it was when he was brought in to coach Isabella Rossellini’s vocals on the set of 1986’s Blue Velvet that his profound collaboration with David Lynch began. Since then, Badalamenti’s distinctive blend of smoky jazz, ’50s pop, and three a.m. noir has seeped into pop culture. It’s easy to hear the hushed dark of his influence on an array of players, be they Nick Cave, the xx, Morphine, or Bohren & Der Club of Gore.
In providing themes that toggled between darkness and light on “Twin Peaks,” Badalamenti’s music slid into American prime time to lingering effect. But Lynch’s feature-length prequel box-office boondoggle Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (25 years on, the Metacritic score holds at 28) clouded over the composer’s work for that film. And while none of the themes are as instantaneously familiar as anything from the series, Badalamenti’s soundtrack remains as enchanting and evocative as ever, presented here in a long overdue vinyl reissue courtesy of the soundtrack fetishists at Death Waltz.
Badalamenti handles all the production, arrangements, and orchestrations; he plays keyboards, even contributing some gruff vocals to the set. Tucked into its 12 tracks are a curious array of players, from bassist Ron Carter and hard bop drummer Grady Tate to the voice most often associated with the man’s music, Julee Cruise. The nearly seven-minute main theme might not readily pair to images of Agent Cooper or Laura Palmer, but it’s brooding and melancholic in its own right. Badalamenti’s keyboard chords haunt in the distance as a muted trumpet lead, walking bassline, and barely grazed ride cymbal conjure dark and lonesome images of their own. For a solo turn at the synthesizer, Badalamenti moves through a spectrum of sadness, distress, love, and resolve on closer “The Voice of Love.”
An allergy towards all things Tom Waits-esque, and the jarring clang of “A Real Indication”—featuring growled lines from Badalamenti himself—are the only real disruptions to the otherwise crepuscular ambience of the album. “The Pink Room” serves up noir-ish instrumental rock, not unlike Chris Isaacs’ “Wicked Game” by way of early Bad Seeds. The composer himself returns to the microphone to lay down a murmur on the skin-crawling two minutes of “The Black Dog Runs at Night,” but the guest vocals are more effective. The legendary Jimmy Scott appears on the slow-moving piano ballad “Sycamore Trees”; the baritone sax and Mr. Scott’s astonishing countertenor twine in the darkness like two cigarettes left smoldering in an ashtray. And the gravity-free bliss that is Cruise’s voice returns to drift like a lone cloud across the hymn-like “Questions in a World of Blue.”
The gorgeous “Don’t Do Anything (I Wouldn’t Do)” evokes early ’60s Blue Note sessions, a gentle meld of piano trio and the hovering vibraphone lines of Jay Hoggard. On “Moving Through Time,” Hoggard’s languid lines mix with Badalamenti’s piano, Tate’s brushed drums, and the expressive bowed bass of Rufus Reid to easily make for the most stunning seven minutes of the soundtrack. Beyond being a revered soundtrack composer, Badalamenti is equally adept at just blending into the group as a player.
