“She’s filled with secrets. Where we’re from, the birds sing a pretty song and there’s always music in the air.” — The Man From Another Place
Mount Eerie – “Between Two Mysteries”
(from Wind’s Poem)
Phil Elverum’s decision to craft an album indebted to black metal and the television series Twin Peaks resulted in, if nothing else, the single greatest concept record of 2009. He sought errant strands in these diverse influences and managed to tie them all together in a way that suggests something that’s at once elemental and spectral, brooding with a primordial consciousness. Those vast Northwestern woods must have a power all their own.
The track “Between Two Mysteries” stays closest to Angelo Badalamenti’s original score, lifting the foreboding chords of “Laura’s Theme” and embellishing them with xylophone and apprehensive scrapes on the guitar, with the singer convincing himself that shapes in the dark are more than just tricks of the light.
Music played a key role in creating Twin Peaks’ atmosphere of unplumbed mystery, but not all of it was frightening. Here, for your resurrected Friday Fix, are three of my favorite musical moments from the only TV show that ever mattered:
The first is the most obvious and the most obviously overdubbed: reticent biker James Hurley switching into falsetto mode singing “Just You & I” with the haunting background vocals of Donna Hayward and Maddy Ferguson. It’s a truly moving 1950’s-style teenage love ballad, but even though James is committed to Donna, his eyes keep wandering over to Maddy, which of course results in drama. Oh James, why can’t you ever just be happy with what you have?
In this classic scene (aren’t they all, though?), Sarah Palmer and her niece Maddy are discussing dream visions they’ve had of the murdered Laura Palmer, when the previously inconsolable Leland Palmer sweeps into the living room with a shock of white hair and sings a jubilant rendition of the 1940’s novelty song “Mairzy Doats,” proving once and for all that a jaunty Irish jig is right for any situation. (My second favorite Leland Palmer vocal performance comes at the dinner party where he breaks into “Get Happy” only to break down. This is the only clip of it that I’ve been able to find on YouTube, but for some reason all the speech is in Portuguese (?), while the singing is pure Lelandese.)
Saving the best for last: Here we have the now clearly insane land developer Benjamin Horne dressed in full Confederate regalia, recreating scenes from the Civil War in miniature. About three minutes into the clip (it’s worth the wait), “General” Horne, egged on by the convincingly kooky Dr. Jacoby, belts out a spirited version of Daniel Emmett’s “I Wish I Was in Dixie”: “Look away, look away, look away, Dixie Land!” (Please excuse the subtitles. Again, this is YouTube we’re dealing with.)
One Comment
Um, I do believe that Strangers with Candy also mattered, Todd.