Soundtracks: Yellowjackets

Louise and I binge-watched the first series of Yellowjackets over the past week. It involves a girls' football team (or "soccer" team, as this is the US) that crash-lands in a remote area of the Canadian mountains in the mid-90s and remain stranded there for almost two years. The show also catches up with four of the survivors in the present day, with a stand out performance from Melanie Lynskey, and a savage double act of Juliette Lewis and Christina Ricci that regularly had me laughing. Out loud. Although I shouldn't need to add those last two words, since laughter is generally out and loud. It's rare we internalise laughter and if it's quiet then it's not really laughter, is it? It's a snigger, at best. But I digress...

Yellowjackets mixes horror, suspense and black comedy to great effect. It's Lost with cannibalism, and more of a sense of humour. The soundtrack is pretty cool too, featuring a lot of carefully selected 90s hits, including welcome returns for Belly, Liz Phair and The Offspring. (I was also surprised how many of the more poppier tunes I felt an affectionate twinge of nostalgia for... step forward, Montell Jordan.) It's not all 90s all the time either: occasionally the soundtrack ventures further back, with Kim Wilde's Cambodia getting a rare spin, alongside... well, this...

Although I have a small amount of time for early Ultravox, I'd long since dismissed their biggest hit as over-played radio twaddle. However, it cropped up prominently in two separate episodes of Yellowjackets, and hearing it again after all this time sent a fair few shivers down my spine. Suddenly, the gated reverb sounds menacing, Midge Ure's desperate vocals truly tragic, and the elliptical lyrics bordering on meaningful. Proof positive that a new context can make you reconsider any song... Midge's moustache, on the other hand, still looks like something the cat could lick off with a spot of well-placed cream... and I somehow doubt the ladies from Yellowjackets would stop there.