Soundtracks: The Killer

We watched the new David Fincher flick starring Michael Fassbender this weekend on the streaming service that used to be a postal DVD rental company (remember that?). I'm a big fan of Fincher (Fight Club is one of my favourite movies) and I do like Fassbender, although I have to admit that I can't see him these days without hearing Steven Toast shout, "FASSBENDER!" (Here's Toast's review of MF's Macbeth as an example of his animosity.) 

Anyway, I liked it. For whatever my opinion is worth. It's a slow and meticulous movie that builds a sense of dread, delivers on your expectations, and then refuses to tread the obvious path. And Fassbender is excellent (sorry, Toast). 

However, the best thing about it is the soundtrack. Fassbender's hitman listens to music when he's on the job. to calm and centre him, and his favourite band is The Smiths. So we get lots of old Smiths classics (sometimes disrupted by differing directorial perspectives), and it's a chance to hear them again without all the baggage that weighs down any play of a Morrissey-related tune these days. We get to relive the darkness, the wit, the irony and introspection, the existential nature of those songs that changed our lives, without anyone whispering, "yeah, but Morrissey's a knob now, isn't he?" in your ear. 

I doubt Stephen or Johnny will have had any say in letting their songs be used in this film, nor will they have received a penny for it, since the record company own them lock, stock, I understand. But that soundtrack made a good film great for me, and if it helps introduce a new generation to their music, all the better.

Crashing into this, my all time favourite Smiths song, as the closing credits started to roll was the icing on the cake.  

Soundtracks – The Bear

There are so many different streaming service vying for our money these days, it’s hard to know where to begin. For years, the default option was Netflix – but is it just me, or has Netflix gone a bit Channel 5 lately? Certainly, the quality threshold has dropped, and it seems unlikely we’ll see another Better Call Saul on that platform. If you haven’t watched The Watcher, do yourself a favour: don’t. It’s awful. We did sit through all 7 episodes, just to see how bad it could get… but we’ve also dropped a few other shows after one or two viewings.

Disney+ has a higher hit rate at the moment. A lot of people ignore it if they’re not fans of Marvel, Star Wars or… well, Disney… but there are some really mature and interesting shows on there. Dopesick, The Dropout and The Old Man (Jeff!) to name but three. One show that’s drawing a lot of attention at the moment is The Bear, starring Jeremy Allen White as a high profile chef who returns to run his family’s restaurant when his older brother commits suicide. Well, I say “restaurant”, but for the first few episodes, it seems little more than a glorified sandwich shop. That said, it does give you a taste of what it’s like to work in a restaurant kitchen… and you think your job is stressful! It’s a funny, fascinating show with a great cast and some very powerful scenes, delivered in easy to digest half hour episodes. Reminds me a lot of Nurse Jackie, if Jackie had cooked bacon rather than saving it. 

Great soundtrack too. One episode ends with a lengthy montage set to the tune below. “Is that REM?” asked Louise. I thought it was, though I didn’t recognise it immediately because it comes from the final REM album, by which point a lot of fans had stopped listening. I think I must be one of them, because I never gave the record more than a few cursory listens, but this is a cracking track. If it hadn’t come from a band laden with over 30 years of exemplary history, I’d have probably been more open to hearing it. Sometimes bands are cursed by their own back catalogues…

Soundtracks: Licorice Pizza

I finally got to see the movie Licorice Pizza (or Liquorice Pizza if you're from this side of the pond) by Paul Thomas Anderson of Boogie Nights & Punch Drunk Love fame. It didn't disappoint. The casting of Alana Haim (of Haim fame) and Cooper Hoofman (son of the late, great Phillip Seymour) was refreshing. Neither of them is conventionally Hollywood, but they have real chemistry, and their on/off relationship feels very real. There are great cameos from Sean Penn, Tom Waits, and best of all, Bradley Cooper, playing Barbra Streisand's (Strei-zand's) real life 70s beau, psychotic movie producer Jon Peters. 

For those of you a little too old to feel nostalgic for the 80s, here's a movie that glorifies the 70s - albeit 70s LA, which is about as far from 70s UK as you can get. Still, the sun is always shining, just as it did in our youth. And the music... well, it may not be Slade and Wizzard, but the soundtrack is still full of lost 70s gems (and quite a few from the 50s and 60s too). Of course, there's the ubiquitous Bowie track (Life On Mars, which apparently was stuck on repeat in every jukebox in the world from 1973 onwards), but also tracks from The James Gang, Blood Sweat & Tears,  Mason Williams, Taj Mahal and others. Not the obvious tracks either (apart from maybe a well-placed Gordon Lightfoot tune). Best of all though is this bobby dazzler, which turns out to be Suzi Quatro's only US Top 40 hit (shurely shome mishtake), teamed with Smokie's Chris Norman. In the UK, it only made #41...

Oh, and in case you're wondering, Licorice Pizza was the name of an LA record shop... for exactly the reason you'd think.

Soundtracks: Stranger Things

For kids like me who grew up on a healthy diet of Back To The Future, The Goonies, ET, Stephen King novels and 80s horror movies, Stranger Things has been a delight from the first episode. And that's before we even start on the soundtrack, which now has me firmly convinced there is NO 80s song that will not fill me with waves of nostalgic delight after just a few bars... I even found myself tapping my feet along to Tarzan Boy by Baltimora in a recent episode, and I never even liked that at the time. Everything sounds better given the jukebox time machine treatment (thanks, Alyson). 

Season 4 is currently in full flow on Netflix, and they've obviously allowed the creators to spend as much money as they want on the final chapters, with feature length episodes, special guest stars (Robert Englund!) and no expense spared on the licensed tunes. This has had a weird knock-on effect though... as Kate Bush's Running Up That Hill (which features prominently in the show) last week re-entered the UK Single Chart. Meaning that right now, we all own a Top Ten hit! (I mean, I seriously doubt anyone reading this blog doesn't have a copy of Running Up That Hill in their collection somewhere.) 

Truly, nostalgia can make us young again. Stranger Things has happened.

  

Soundtracks: Moon Knight

The new Marvel series Moon Knight is off to a great start, with Oscar Isaac putting in an excellent performance as the split personality anti-hero, a mild-mannered museum worker with cod-Dick Van Dyke accent who's unaware of his own secret life as a mercenary empowered by an Egyptian moon god. It's cobblers, of course, when you write it down like that, but once disbelief is suspended, the first episode promises a rollicking ride. Not least because of the presence of one of my favourite actors, Ethan Hawke, as the baddie... but also because of some choice cuts in the soundtrack, chiefly a track that features prominently, A Man Without Love. I recognised the song immediately but couldn't place the singer... was it Tom Jones? Scott Walker (at a push)? Actually, no, it was Engelbert. I feel like I should have known that, but I didn't. Anyway, it's been rattling around in my brain ever since...

Soundtracks: House of the Devil

Louise went out last night, so I turned off all the lights and watched a scary film. As you do. 

House of the Devil was filmed in 2009 by director Ti West, but it looks and feels exactly like a horror move from the late 70s or early 80s, from the grainy 16mm film stock to the yellow titles, and the long slow build up to a fast-cut grand guignol finale. Being a horror fan who finds most modern day horrors too glossy and lacking any suspense or atmosphere, this was a real treat.

The period detail was excellent too - from the heroine making calls on a rotary dial phone attached to the wall, through to the clunky walkman that she slipped cassettes into to listen to the track below, one of only three retro tunes featured in the soundtrack (the other two being One Thing Leads To Another by The Fixx and One Of Our Submarines by Thomas Dolby). None of these were big hits, certainly not in the UK anyway, but they were well chosen nevertheless.

For 90 minutes, I was transported back to my teenage bedroom, late on a Friday and Saturday night, when I would choose the scariest movie I could find on the four available channels to keep me going till midnight...

 

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.