New Moon Soundtrack Review

By now I’m sure most of you have listened to the New Moon Soundtrack on Myspace and tomorrow the bulk of you will have probably ran out and bought the album.  I was fortunate enough to get my hands on it before it hit Myspace, but alas my review is better late than never, especially for those of you who may not have heard it yet.

For those of you who went back in time and read our ‘Before There Was Edward…’ post you might recall that I did a rather extensive Twilight Soundtrack Review on my personal blog for the Twilight Soundtrack release. This post is going to be along the same lines, and will explore the songs musically, stylistically, and just tell you overall what is good and bad.

The New Moon Soundtrack opens with the first single from the album, Death Cab For Cutie’s Meet Me on the Equinox. The song has grown on me since my initial mention of it when they announced the New Moon Soundtrack Track list, but it is still one of my least liked Death Cab For Cutie songs.  While Death Cab is not one of the only radio friendly bands on this soundtrack, it is in my opinion that this is the only track that will get very much airplay from the soundtrack unlike Twilight which featured a number of tracks from bands like Paramore, Muse, and Linkin Park that received significant airplay.  While I know Kristina hates me for saying it, I really think that this track is going to be the movie opener that foreshadows the downward spiral that is to come.

The second track from Band of Skulls titled Friends has the band doing exactly what I thought they would and had them experiment a bit outside of the traditional sound I had heard on some of their previously released work.  The upbeat track starts off with a buzzing distorted guitar riff that carries through the bulk of the song.  The interesting thing about this song is that it reminds me a lot of something you would hear in a campy teen movie.  My guess is that its upbeat tempo is going to slot it somewhere during a school scene or maybe the infamous double date with Mike and Jacob.

Thom Yorke provides the third track on the album titled Hearing Damage.  Trip-hop beats, deep synthesized melodies, and Yorke’s haunting reverberated vocals bring a sudden ambient sound to the soundtrack that over time really defines this album.  While Hearing Damage is clearly less stripped down than much of the other solemn tracks on the soundtrack it definitely sets the mood for the tracks to come.

Possibility by Lykke Li is probably one of my favorite tracks on the entire soundtrack.  Distant vocals remnant of tracks off of Mazzy Stars 1993 breakthrough album So Tonight That I Might See, accompanied by a repetitive piano accompaniment give this song a very dreamy, ethereal feel.  What made this track even more fascinating was how it opens in a way that feels much like a modern day Negro spiritual.  Opening with the words, “It’s a possibility all that I had was all I’m gonn’ get” followed by a choir of solemn humming. Possibility is perhaps one of the most dynamic songs on the album and I would say if you were to listen to just one song off of the New Moon Soundtrack listen to this one.

While the Killers didn’t disappoint me as much as I though they would, A White Demon Love Song is still subpar to the tracks I came to love off of Hot Fuss.  The interesting thing about this track is how much of a Beatles feel it has.  The song essentially builds upon itself by slowly adding more and more instruments as the song progresses, beginning with noting more than distant reverberated guitar and piano and ending with an full ensemble of electric guitar, drums, a heavy hitting bass line, tambourine, and even strings.  Again not one of my favorite works from The Killers, but its Beatles-like feel earned it some extra points in my book.

Satellite Heart by Anya Marina is the first track to really introduce listeners to the folky stripped down sound much of the album possesses. Soulful vocals, acoustic guitar, and harmonica blend in this song to bring to life a story of a distant lover holding true to the one she loves regardless of what he does and where he is. Lyrically the song is quite fitting for Bella coping with the loss of Edward.  This is another one of my favorites and definitely worth a listen.

With an added guitar riff and a slightly more up tempo drum track, Muse’s I Belong To You (New Moon Remix) doesn’t stray too far from the original track that was featured on their latest album, The Resistance.  The songs biggest change comes with its removal of the opera-like interlude sung in French that is heard in the original version of the track; this change also cuts the song length nearly in half. Again I am baffled as to how this one is going to work itself into the film, but my assumption is that it will appear somewhere in the credits.

Bon Iver and St. Vincent bring us back to the folky feel that I said dominates much of this album with Roslyn.  Acoustic guitar and ghostly vocals give this track an other worldly, almost dreamy feel. Another great track and another great addition to this collection of songs.

BRMC’s Done All Wrong mixes folky guitar and distant percussion with more modern rock sounding vocals which follow the formula used in much of this album. While nothing stands out about this particular track it is a decent song and fair addition to this collection of music.

I originally slotted Hurricane Bells as a Death Cab For Cutie or Shins-like artist, but hearing their track Monsters for the New Moon Soundtrack I am no longer sure what to classify these guys as.  The song Monsters reminds me a lot of some of the early 90’s work by Beck. This song is just OK in my opinion and really feels out of place overall in this collection of songs.

Sea Wolf’s The Violet Hour continues a string of lackluster more upbeat tracks on the album. Early on I mentioned that the band reminded me a lot of the Bravery and The Violet Hour plays right in to that assertion.  If you’ve heard stuff by the Bravery, you’ve essentially heard this song.

Ok Go’s Shooting the Moon is probably a step above the last two tracks I mentioned yet nowhere near as good as some of the other tracks which I’ve given praise. Acoustic guitar, a bass drum, and a unique synthesized accompaniment give the more stripped down sound much of the soundtrack has a unique twist, but it wasn’t enough to really make it stand out among some of the other tracks on the album.  The song ends with hard hitting drum beats and crunchy guitars that create a unique contrast to the follow track by Grizzly Bear.

The thing that drive’s me mad about Grizzly Bear’s Slow Life is that it’s verses remind me so much of a song I have heard in another film that I honestly thought it may have been a cover even though I knew going in that Summit had announced early on that the soundtrack would be made up of all original songs.  Slow Life seems to incorporate bits and pieces of the musical puzzle found on this album and bring it all together for this single track.  Mixing some of the common elements like acoustic guitars, simplistic drum beats and ghostly and distant backing vocals, Slow Life helps to really wrap up the overall sound of this album.

I initially labeled the Editors as an Interpol clone, but with No Sound But The Wind they are anything but.  No Sound But The Wind has a dark cabaret feel to it that mixes repetitive piano and strong concert vocals.  No Sound But The Wind is an amazingly unique track that works very well to help wrap up this ensemble of songs.  If I had to guess where this appears, I am going to guess that perhaps we will hear this song in Volterra at some point, perhaps even while Bella is running to Edward simply because of how grand, yet dark the song is.

Like with Twilight, the New Moon Soundtrack is rounded out by a lovely piece from the film’s score.  Alexandre Desplat’s New Moon (The Meadow) is incredible.  A piece performed solely on piano, The Meadow is what I feel Bella’s Lullaby should have been in Twilight.  I loved Burwell’s lullaby, but Desplat’s The Meadow is beautifully written and in a style that reminds me of how I imagined Edward playing the piano when I read the Twilight books.

Overall I really like the New Moon Soundtrack, even with its bad eggs thrown in the mix.  I have been playing the album repeatedly on my way to and from work each day and will probably do so for quite some time.  Overall the soundtrack to New Moon trumps anything that was put together for the first Twilight film.  While I enjoyed the soundtrack to the first film it didn’t have the dynamic that I feel in the New Moon Soundtrack. However, just as with Twilight I am really uncertain as to how these songs are going to play in to the overall film. While they all have a strong moody vibe that work well for the New Moon plot, they really aren’t what I had envisioned the New Moon Soundtrack sounding like.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the New Moon Soundtrack in my opinion is the fact that the artists chosen and the music stylistically doesn’t feel like something that would be widely accepted by the film’s largely teen audience.  While the soundtrack includes radio friendly acts like Death Cab For Cutie, The Killers, Muse, and Ok Go the songs do not follow the normal style patterns for these artists.  I still think the album is going to do incredible because it ties into the film, but I am curious to see how many teens actually enjoy the album.