4Play

April 6, 2008

Various Artists - August Rush: Music from the Motion Picture - Sony
Keri Russell plays a cellist, Jonathan Rhys Meyers plays an Irish guitarist, and Freddie Highmore plays their long-lost, gifted musician/street-performer son in this inventive music-laced tale. Rhys Meyers does his own vocal work as an indie-rock singer, and he surprisingly does quite well on such remakes as “Moondance” and Lucas Reynolds’ “Something Inside.” There’s a lot of cello work here, too, befitting Russell’s character. And several other musicians (and Robin Williams) make appearances on the soundtrack, from John “Five for Fighting” Ondrasik’s songwriting contributings (“King of the Earth”) to John Legend’s “Someday” to the Paula Cole/Chris Botti duet on “God Bless the Child.” It’s a nice mix of pop, jazz, and strings that is the perfect complement to this unusual little film.


Glen Hansard - Once: Original Soundtrack - Columbia
Frames frontman Glen Hansard really struck gold with this one. The skilled Irish musician - whom you might vaguely recognize from his role in the Irish soul band movie The Commitments - has long languished in the hipster underground with his band, that is, until this movie came along. Once is the tale of two musicians meeting and falling in love, and the songs are a perfect match for the story itself, half sung by Hansard solo, and half with Czech singer Marketa Irglova; their quirky voices together are pure gold. Standouts include Hansard’s “Say It To Me” (originally from the ‘96 Frames album Fitzcarraldo), “When Your Mind’s Made Up” (from the latest Frames disc, The Cost), Irglova’s “The Hill,” and, of course, the Oscar-winning duet “Falling Slowly.”


Various Artists - Across the Universe: Music from the Motion Picture - Interscope
This is something of a difficult CD to review for any Beatles fan, as there’s a huge difference between these songs’ effectiveness within the context of a movie plot (a love story set in the ‘60s anti-war/counterculture movement) and as stand-alone tracks. But since this is a CD review, not a movie review, that’s the approach we’ll take here. That said, there might be a couple of interpretations here that are okay (all songs on this soundtrack are Beatles numbers) - Bono’s “I Am The Walrus” and The Secret Machines’ take on “Blue Jay Way,” specifically - but the rest are really just... not very good. The actors may have done passably singing these songs as characters within the movie’s plot, but as a separate listen, both karaoke and American Idol spring to mind. Stick to the originals.


Eddie Vedder - Music from the Motion Picture Into the Wild - J-Records
Let’s start by informing you that, first thing’s first, this isn’t Pearl Jam. Instead, PJ frontman Eddie Vedder takes a break from his landmark grunge project to play every instrument on the soundtrack to this film, which tells the tale of a man who gives all his money away and goes off to live - and die - in the wilds of Alaska on his own. Utilizing mostly acoustic instruments, including guitar and banjo, Vedder captures both the wilderness and isolation feels of the movie on these tracks. The opener, “Setting Forth,” recalls the spirit of, say, John Denver, off on a mountainous jaunt, as does the heavier “Far Behind”; while the rest of the tracks seem to stick closer to the more introspective side of things, from the accusatory “Society” to the eerie “The Wolf” and the end credit track, “Guaranteed.”