Sugar-loaded Christmas ballads aside, if there was ever a holiday that lends itself to a soundtrack, it’s Halloween. Pacific Northwesterner E. Ray Bechard was thinking a parallel thought, though more of a soundtrack to a movie in his own head. He pulled together some musician friends, now known as This Lonesome Paradise, and they headed to a restored, 100-year-old bath house in cold, gray Astoria, Oregon, and captured that record. Called Electric Dreams, it turned out to have the dark, creepy, bone-chilling essence that made it natural to release it today (October 31).
Bechard sets the tone with the first chords of the first song on the album, it’s title track. It has a Twin Peaks feel, with plenty of reverb in the guitar and the brushes on the drums conjuring up some unknown spirit just out of sight. Also reflecting the idea of a soundtrack are Wild Ones and Goodbye Death Valley, both owing a bit of gratitude to Sergio Leone’s westerns. The scariest song on the record is Night Stalker, with a dirge tempo and electric organ-created dissonance captioning a time when “the devil lives in LA”. The happiest number (happy is relative) is Creatures Of the Night, a film noir, doo-wop song where the devil wears blue suede shoes and everyone wants to “let the moonshine be our light”.
For all the grimness in the lyrics and heaviness in the music, Bechard kept this album from being depressing. It’s dark in a sarcastic kind of way, like putting the fun in dysfunctional. So if you’re looking for a soundtrack for this evening, don’t hesitate to put on Electric Dreams. It’s party music for howling at the moon.
About the author: I've actually driven from Tehatchapee to Tonopah. And I've seen Dallas from a DC-9 at night.