I love the fact that I have lived long enough to witness the word Lynchian become a recognised label, one that can be applied to art and creativity across a wide range of spectrums. In the visual aspect it is synonymous with delving beyond the ordinary surface to find the dark and unsettling underbelly of modern society, to turn the familiar into the something elusive, uncertain and eventually horrific. 68 Creep seem to be the perfect band to take such an attitude and render it into the perfect soundtrack.
As Kimberly Q sings “I killed my baby in the middle of the night” and then throws in a unemotional “I’m sorry” you get to the heart of what the band are about. Slow, meandering gothic jams and visceral garage rock grinding creates a canvas onto which they paint their terrible visions. But the real terror is not the things they sing about so much as the wistful detachment with which they deliver them, the horror seems so much more intense when it appears to be pointless or just for kicks.
Part PJ Harvey and part The Cramps, 68 Creep inject their own brand of darkness into the gothic musical heart, one for a more modern, smarter musical audience. Whereas first time around the genre was clinical and romantic, florid and pretentious, now it is focused and intense, raw and threatening. Guitars wander between razor wire shape edges and cavernous onslaughts and the vocals are 60’s girl group leads warped and lacerated by life all driven by an unrelenting distant industrial beat.
Strangely beautiful, wonderfully weird, taut and tense and as I said in the introduction, brilliantly Lynchian, it comes as no surprise that the album title derives from the great man’s most examined, interpreted and brilliantly confusing film Mulholland Drive.
