The Fairy Godmother of Dream Pop: Revisiting Julee Cruise's "Floating Into the Night"

Julee Cruise

As the story goes, in 1985, eccentric film auteur David Lynch was trying to obtain a song for a key scene in his movie "Blue Velvet".  That song was a remake of Tim Buckley's "Song to the Siren" by This Mortal Coil, performed by Elizabeth Fraser and Robin Guthrie of Cocteau Twins.  But the licensing of that particular song turned out to be cost prohibitive.  (What gives, Ivo?)  So Lynch instructed the film composer, Angelo Badalamenti, to score a song that would be along the same vein, something equally ethereal and haunting, with a vocalist who had the same powerful yet otherwordly quality as Liz Fraser.  Badalamenti suggested a certain singer that he had known while involved with musical theater while in New York City, and Julee Cruise was brought on board.  Together they scored a heavenly masterpiece called "Mysteries of Love" that featured synthesizers and orchestra expanding into a celestial glow with the soft vocals of Cruise flitting like butterflies, like angels weeping from the clouds.

The song appears during the final scene of "Blue Velvet", and it solidified a relationship between Cruise, Badalamenti, and Lynch that would remain strong for the rest of the decade, not only providing soundtracks for movies, television, and theater, but helping solidify and developing an entire genre.  Music critics cite Cruise's debut album, "Floating Into the Night", as defining dream pop, which included such obscure acts as This Mortal Coil, Cocteau Twins, A.R. Kane, and others, transforming from an inchoate movement into a real presence in music.  A genre that exists to this day, and happens to be my favorite.  It is nearly impossible to imagine any of this happening without the music on "Floating Into the Night", some of which was Grammy nominated.

Angelo Badalamenti

"Floating Into the Night" represents the bulk of the work resulting from this collaboration - Badalamenti composing the music, Lynch penning the lyrics, and Cruise providing the vocals.  There are some electronic synthesizers, some jazz influence and a lot of '50s doo-wop.  The result is smoky and sultry, like some cabaret on the edge of a feverish nightmare, languid, dreamy, and tumescent.  In addition to "Mysteries of Love" from "Blue Velvet", there are several tracks included from surreal prime time soap opera, "Twin Peaks", most notably featuring the lazy "Falling",  the wistful theme of "Twin Peaks", complete with droopy bass and Cruise's breathy voice.  The rest are from "Industrial Symphony No. 1: The Dream of the Broken Hearted", an avant garde musical play by Lynch, complete with enormous metal sets, cameos from Nicholas Cage and Laura Dern, reprising their roles from Lynch's "Wild At Heart", and Cruise singing her songs suspended by a crane far above the stage.

I guess I shouldn't continue without pointing out what all of this stuff meant to me back then.  I was an arsty, idealistic teenager.  Practically everything I was into was a form of dream pop.  Cocteau Twins was my favorite band.  I loved This Mortal Coil, Clan of Xymox, and every other ethereal band I could find my hand on.  And David Lynch - I worshipped everything Lynch did - "Eraserhead", "Elephant Man", "Dune".  It doesn't matter if I now think some of the stuff - like "Industrial Symphony" - is bloated and pretentious.  Back then, it was art, and that's all that mattered to me.  When "Twin Peaks" hit the airwaves, it was like a vindication of everything I valued that was understood by nobody.  And "Floating Into the Night" just happened to fit along with everything I listened to and liked anyway.  This was a very important album to me at age nineteen.

David Lynch

The album starts with "Floating", establishing the swaying tone to the record, complete with under-saturated saxaphones, like a night unlacing in an empty bar with alcoholic splendor.  "I Remember" starts with the same hushed tempo, but then dissolves into a Stravinski-like, random, discordant episode with Cruise describing a nightmarish, nonsensical scene but then returns to reality again, finishing out with a melodic doo-wop chorus.  "Rockin' Back Inside My Heart", with its swirling guitars, could come right out of a '50s jukebox.

"Now it's dark," Cruise whispers at the start of the mournful "Into the Night", one of the selections from "Twin Peaks", wafting breezily along until, for the briefest of moments, at the bridge, it explodes into an a cacaphony of horns, only to resume its ginger tempo.  "I Float Alone" is one of the songs from "Industrial Symphony" and continues the sultry disentanglement from reality, Cruise's voice as soft as satin sheets.  "The Nightingale", also from "Twin Peaks", has always been my favorite, another docile doo-wop, Cruise's cascading voice blending with the whirlpool of soft guitars.  "The Swan" is in the same vein, and "The World Spins", a variation of "Falling", always brings back memories of when we found out how Laura Palmer died.

This record not only solidified dream pop as a codified genre in the pantheon of music, but it defined a period in my life where I was barely beginning to understand art and music, coming into tastes of my own.  I will always be grateful for this collection.  It takes me back to times, dreams, memories, and people that I would not remember otherwise.  Now, there have been confirmed rumors of another "Twin Peaks" series to start in 2017.  There is also rumors of another collaboration between David Lynch, Angelo Badalamenti, and Julee Cruise for the series.  I tell you, I simply cannot wait to be caught up into those effulgent sounds again.