It’s been a while since I’ve posted - but to be honest, I didn’t have a great “haul” over the holidays of actual CDs and it’s taken some time to catch up on the latest available stuff. These days I wouldn’t be able to listen to much if it weren’t for Streaming Soundtracks, I’m afraid. So I apologize if I’ve become a parody of myself with my lengthy observations on limited subjects. I’m trying to ramp up to writing full reviews again. With so little disposable income at this time, I’ve had to stick to my old warhorse composers for the most part. (And the Bernstein box? Forget it.)
I did pick up Perfume: Story of a Murderer by Tom Tykwer and those other two guys whose names I can never remember. Unfortunately I have to say that the outstanding first impression I had of this music didn’t really hold up on repeated listenings (some cues better than others). I know why people are crazy about it, though: the score really has no truly memorable themes, but it certainly has a bold and assertive attitude, and a real exoticism and clarity that gets you totally excited about the whole weird premise of the movie. No one ever talks about it, but the act of buying a soundtrack CD and listening to it is an act of imagination because you are never, ever free of your impressions (real or imagined) of the film while you are listening. Tykwer’s notes about film music being the perfect way to represent perfume “notes” are intriguing and that’s almost my cue to start writing some big long essay… but I haven’t seen the film yet and am not likely to until it comes out on DVD. In any case this score has been very well received by thoughtful fans. If you think you might like it, you probably will.
It has been a very busy winter for long-deprived Patrick Doyle fans and having three new CDs to digest, in as many months, is downright bizarre considering the long release droughts we have endured since the glory days of the ’90s when all his stuff came out promptly. It’s almost like 1993 again — in terms of quantity, at any rate; and what we get are three vastly different scores.
Eragon seems to have disappointed some people (who were perhaps expecting a LOTR clone), but as a longtime Doyle fan I was touched to hear the way it harks back to a very old score of his — none other than Shipwrecked, that minor holy grail of soundtrack collectors (and a score in which using a single repeated theme was the composer’s deliberate choice). During the 1980s I think people would have gone genuinely ga-ga over Doyle’s approach, but “in a world where” dark and ponderous is the new film-musical black, perhaps there’s less patience for bright and straightforward boy’s own adventure. That said, surely the soaring, spirited main title music is the most infectious he’s ever written this side of Much Ado About Nothing, and the single theme is nicely put through its paces throughout subsequent cues. I don’t quite understand other reviewers’ excitement over “Battle for Varden,” as Doyle has done much better in the battle-cue department, but the CD on whole is a pleasing listen. (”Pleasant” may not be what people expected from the subject material, but them’s the breaks.)
Pars Vite et Reviens Tard, on the other hand, is a disappointing release for me — probably the first Doyle score that really seems to consist entirely of purely functional background atmospherics. The film is a moody contemporary thriller, and while the score seems appropriate for the genre and no doubt does its job in the film, that… isn’t what people generally buy Doyle CDs for. They want flash and dramatics, which the long-running Doyle/Wargnier partnership has often produced, but not here. (I have a pretty sensitive ear and a very open mind, but I honestly can’t even detect the melody that Doyle refers to in his customary sleeve notes.) There are some moments of mild interest where Doyle explores some harmonics and sonorities that are new for him (including a pizzicato trick reminiscent of Penderecki’s “Polymorphia”), but there is an awful lot of uncharacteristically inert drone and ostinato filling up a generous 40 minutes. I found the cue “Africa” generated some subtle tension in a Thomas Newman-esque kind of way, but in the end I would say this CD is strictly for completists only. However, while the music unfortunately is not a memorable listen on disc, I would be willing to bet that you’ll be hearing many aspects of this score again in Doyle’s future work — hopefully, used in more vivid musical settings.
The most satisfying of Doyle’s recent trio of CDs has been Wah-Wah, which, despite its bizarre title, is more conventional and very dignified fare. “Wah-wah” is both the sound of stuffy colonial Brits talking (according to one of the film’s characters), as well as the sound of crying, and it also perfectly encapsulates what this score is musically about at its heart: taking a proud, stuffy and veddy British theme (stated most plainly in “Independence”) and making it weep in spite of itself. This is a really fine score in the mold of his very fine Donnie Brasco of ten years ago, where the music seems to speak both of the characters’ private emotions and of the larger, more impassive forces of conflict or history that enfold them. At this point in his career Doyle could write English anthems with one hand tied behind his back; but it takes a gutsy composer to take that kind of music to another, very unreserved level. (You see, the English, they hate that sort of thing.) Heroic measures were also taken to ensure that there was enough music to fill out the CD for at least a half hour, so we get some live sound and some interestingly incongruous African choir (”Ngatsi Ngisahamba” being yet another unique vocal/choral cue to add to Doyle’s collection), and best of all, a leisurely six-minute piano suite of all the themes and motifs. As with Mrs. Winterbourne, I think this is destined to be one of those really good Doyle scores which the average collector will not bother checking out. Don’t be stupid — pick it up.
Wah-Wah (which actually predates Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) is possibly also the last score Doyle has written largely with pen and paper. I have to be honest and say that Doyle’s work since he started using Logic instead of pen and paper, hasn’t wholly set me on fire. Whether that’s just coincidence, or if it’s something genuinely connected to his use of Logic, remains to be heard.
The Galindez File (aka The Galindez Mystery, aka El Misterio Galindez) is a 2003 score that is a mystery to most Doyle fans but fortunately the Sundance Channel recently aired the movie, so I took a listen. This is a smallish, unobtrusive score that, as used in the film, most resembles a sort of Argentinean Gosford Park (although the film does not take place in Argentina) with tango-ish elements in place of jazz. (Gosford Park, by the way, was a very helpful score in its film.) I have to say that Galindez (the movie) is frightfully dull — there really is no mystery as to what happened to Galindez — but the score does good work in creating a grim feel and also nudging a very talky screenplay along. It’s also the only Doyle score I can think of that really has a very frankly “ethnic” tone.. There doesn’t seem to be enough music to merit any sort of CD release, but I would have liked to hear some of it up closer, all the same.
Lastly, just a quick comment: I only just recently listened to the end titles of Man to Man, the 2004 English-language effort by Regis Wargnier which never was released in the States. While there is a DVD-ripped bootleg floating around out there, I must say that while I’m usually pretty noncommittal about unreleased Doyle music (Bridget Jones, Blow Dry, the aforementioned Galindez) I’d fight for this one, if only for the end title cue alone. It’s that outstanding; I’m talking, “My Father’s Favorite,” “St. Crispin’s Day” outstanding. (Well, almost.) Twenty years from now, someone’s going to put this out and I suspect people are going to wonder how it was ever overlooked.
Part 2: The Queen, The Illusionist and a couple by Dario Marianelli.
