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• Best Sound Tracks Ever.

Twin Peaks Music - Season Two Music and More - by Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch. (Submitted photo for The Star)

Instrumental movie soundtracks work well, by design, as music to accompany life.

While I enjoy Danny Elfman's work with director Tim Burton, Carter Burwell's with the Coen Brothers, and movie music by Vangelis and Ry Cooder with a host of other directors, I always come back !to Angelo Badalamenti.

And this composer with a flair for the dark and surreal -- as well as the eerily chipper -- is at his very best when working with equally offbeat director David Lynch.

The strength of this collaboration is evident, once again, on many of the tracks included in the latest release -- a collection of songs from the second season of the early-1990s cult favorite "Twin Peaks."

The 22-song set is sweet as a damn fine piece of cherry pie for "Twin Peaks" completists who waited 17 years for its release. But, for others mainly after more good music from Badalamenti, this is a mixed bag.

While soundtracks to other Lynch-Badalamenti projects like "Blue Velvet," "Mulholland Drive" and the first season of "Twin Peaks" are solid throughout, a third of these newly released songs are duds.

While Lynch directed most of the first-season episodes, he stepped back during the second. Without his direct influence, the show softened up to the point of stinking a little. The weakest music here feels the same way: Lynchless.

Some, like "High School Swing," feel like lifeless soft-jazz dinner music. Worse, "Harold's Theme" smacks of New Age easy listening. Others just don't have the same kind of emotional and narrative edge we get from the album's best songs like the freak-show wild "I'm Hurt Bad," the super dirty "Blue Frank" or the slow and spooky, nine-minute "Dark Mood Woods/The Red Room."

The songs that work -- full of walking upright bass, haunting and noisy synthesizers, twangy '50s guitars, brushed drums and scary strings -- make it easy to overlook the others that don't.

Check these other Badalamenti-Lynch recordings:

"Mulholland Drive" -- Badalamenti brought in the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra for this varied masterpiece. Start here.

"Blue Velvet" -- 8incredible soundtrack to the movie that put Lynch on the map.

"Lost Highway" -- also features David Bowie, Lou Reed, Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson.

"Wild at Heart" -- great orchestral stuff by 8Badalamenti; Chris Isaak and Nicolas Cage sing "Love Me Tender."

"Twin Peaks" -- first season soundtrack with several great songs and some that feel a little dated.

"Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me" -- from the theatrical prequel to "Twin Peaks"; features a few excellently gritty songs Lynch made himself.

"The Straight Story" -- these Badalamenti instrumental songs aren't dark at all since they go with a movie about an old man driving a garden tractor across Iowa. But they work well: rustic and rural, but still Lynchian.

"Voice of Love" and "Floating into the Night" by Julee Cruise -- Lynch and Badalamenti teamed up twice with the singer with the ethereal voice who appears on the first "Twin Peaks" soundtrack and starred in the stage piece !by Lynch-Badalamenti called "Industrial Symphony No. 1."

"BlueBob" -- Lynch made this album full of dirty, repetitive guitar and odd lyrics without Badalamenti.