Various Artists - Twin Peaks (Music from the Limited Event Series)

Without the context of the third season of Twin Peaks, the scenes that were set to these songs, the deeper meanings behind them, and the events to which they refer, this album could come off as merely a mixtape curated by David Lynch…but is that enough for the casual listener? LET’S FIND OUT! TOGETHER!!!

What’s on offer is just under an hour and twenty minutes of some pretty challenging and diverse stuff. You’ve got two incredibly well-known songs in Booker T. and the MG's “Green Onions” and ZZ Top’s “Sharp Dressed Man”, some truly deep and twisted tracks with Nine Inch Nails’ “She’s Gone Away”* and the Veils’ “Axolotl”, some of those Oldies that come across both innocuous and sinister in the same breath with the Paris Sisters' “I Love How You Love Me” and the Platters’ “My Prayer”, and, love it or hate it or despise it or loathe it, the goddamn awful “Just You” from the shit abyss of season two of the show is here for you to skip. There’s also Shawn Colvin’s cover of “Viva Las Vegas” which some might consider “nocturnal” but I just consider “sleepy”, and the requisite Julee Cruise number topping things off. The standouts include the Chromatics' “Shadow” (feels like Ladytron and Telepathe, but with three voices instead of two), the Veils’ “Axolotl” and Eddie Vedder’s heart wrenching and beautiful “Out of Sand”.

Without context, this soundtrack definitely stands on its own, specifically if you’re driving through a desert at night, especially while housing some kind of malevolent, fire-and-violence-based parasite in your body. If that sentence made no sense to you and you’re literally just discovering Twin Peaks through this, the soundtrack to its third season which aired twenty five years after its second season...I’ll put it another way: this release could serve as your “Nighttime Desert Dream Murder” playlist on Spotify, no problem.

* Which, as was just revealed by Trent Reznor, was created for the show.