‘I’ll Point You to a Better Time/A Safer Place to Be’: Music, Nostalgia and Estrangement in Twin Peaks: The Return

Abstract

In her review of the first two episodes of Twin Peaks: The Return (The Return hereafter) for Variety Sonia Saraiya criticises the "inexplicably stupid" closing scene in which "the indie-electronic band Chromatics performs to a room of middle-aged townies taking tequila shots" 1 . Leaving aside the class contempt, ageism and regional snobbery evident here, Saraiya also demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of the aesthetic of the series: Chromatics' music is strongly influenced by 1980s synthpop -most notably New Order and Giorgio Moroder -and as such its inclusion in the show is consistent with the use of similarly 'retro' music in the original series -usually referencing the 1950s -and throughout Lynch's oeuvre.Furthermore, Chromatics' presence, and that of the other acts performing at the Bang Bang Bar -a mixture of fifties and eighties influenced musicians -makes perfect extra-diegetic sense in the context of what music critic Simon Reynolds has termed "retromania": pop culture's fascination with, and constant referencing of, its past. The late cultural critic Mark Fisher developed Reynolds' concept in his 2014 book Ghosts of My Life with his analysis of the "classic style" of twenty-first century artists such as Amy Winehouse and Adele, whose music "belong[s] neither to the present or the past, but to some timeless era, an eternal 1960s or an eternal 80s". 2 For Fisher such music is an indication of cultural stasis and a lack of innovation (one theme of the book is, as its subtitle indicates, "lost futures"); however, in the context of Twin Peaks "retro" music -which in some cases, like the Cactus Blossoms (episode 3) or Rebekah Del Rio (episode 10), is such a perfect pastiche of its sources as to seem to belong authentically to the past -also functions as an element of estrangement. Twin Peaks is set in a world recognisably similar to our own but noticeably, strangely, different.In this sense, the addition of the definite article to the band Nine Inch Nails' name when they are introduced at the Roadhouse in episode 8, and also in its closing credits with the definite article in quotation marks, serves as an example of divergence from the actual world: this is not 'our' Nine Inch Nails but an alternative version. Similarly, the evocation of the pop cultural past in The Return may seem more realistic today than perhaps it did in the 1990s of the original series' broadcast given how digital technology, particularly the internet, has created a kind of 'archive culture', but it also works as another indicator of difference: Twin Peaks, both the series and the town, is not quite a pocket universe, but it does seem to exist in some kind of temporal aesthetic bubble (which is generally true of Lynch's work and his fondness for anachronisms: when exactly, for example, are Blue Velvet or Mulholland Drive set?). This chapter will discuss how the 'retro' music of the various acts performing at the Bang Bang Bar/Roadhouse contributes both to the sense of nostalgia surrounding The Return epitextually and to the themes ...