As he promised last week, David Lynch has announced his next project for fans to “see and hear”: A new album, Cellophane Memories with Chrystabell, set to arrive Aug. 2 via Sacred Bones.
Accompanying the album announcement is the first single, “Sublime Eternal Love,” which comes with a music video directed by Lynch. (A balm, perhaps, for those hoping Lynch would maybe, today, announce his first feature film since 2006 — but alas the wait goes on). In the “Sublime Eternal Love” video, Chrystabell appears in close-up and triplicate, effectively offering up different versions of herself simultaneously as she sings the mesmerizing, synth-washed tune.
Lynch and Chrystabell first worked together on the soundtrack for Inland Empire, the filmmaker’s last movie to date. Since then, they’ve been regular collaborators, with Lynch producing and writing the lyrics for her 2011 debut album, This Train, as well as her 2016 LP Somewhere in the Nowhere. Chrystabell also appeared as Agent Tammy Preston in 2017’s Twin Peaks: The Return.
Per a press bio for Cellophane Memories, Lynch was inspired to make the new album after experiencing a vision “during a nighttime walk through a forest of tall trees, over the tops of which he saw a bright light. As he recalls it, the light became the lilt of Chrystabell’s voice and revealed a secret to him.”
In a statement, Chrystbell said the album contains “many doors that are left open to wonder, wander and get turned around in,” adding: “It’s like mood music, not that it creates mood, but more that it reflects your own.”
Cellophane Memories marks Lynch’s first album since 2018’s Thought Gang, a collaborative effort with the late composer Angelo Badalmenti. The new album will also notably feature some posthumous contributions from Badalamenti, who died in 2022. In 2020, Lynch did release a single comprising two new songs he’d written for his monkey interrogation short film, What Did Jack Do?