Music: New Moon Soundtrack
You wouldn’t think that a soundtrack for a series primarily enjoyed by teenage girls could be so powerfully emotional to people over the age of 14, but New Moon manages to confound expectations.
For a little context, the foundations of the plot are that the sparkly vampire Edward breaks up with Bella, who then has a breakdown over it and Jacob, who rarely wears a shirt, helps her through it. It took a particularly convincing friend to get me to see past the sparkling vampires and a warped idea of a relationship, but once I did, I was more than impressed.
The first song brought to my attention was Thom Yorke with Hearing Damage. Few words can describe how brilliant this song is, despite FiX’s editor denouncing Radiohead and all related projects as “crap”. It starts out fuzzy then gradually becomes so entrancing that on first listen, I forgot I was in a shoddy halls of residence for a few moments. Thom Yorke’s voice is like velvet in this song combined with a hypnotic melody, what’s not to love?
Lykke Li’s Possibility is the next song I found to be wholly impressive after a few listens. Initially I thought it was lacking in substance but it’s so stark and almost uncomfortably frank, you can hear the heartbreak in her voice and believe in it.
But one of the strongest songs on the soundtrack has to be Grizzly Bear feat. Victoria Legrand with Slow Life. I’d say it’s fairly standard Grizzly Bear with sweeping melodies as well as otherworldly vocals and, like Possibility, it’s very honest with its emotions. I find the chorus to be particularly heart-wrenching with lyrics like ‘even though you’re the only one I see, if you ask I’ll cut you free’.
Other special songs on the soundtrack include the Editors’ No Sound But The Wind a simultaneously heart warming and breaking song (listen to it, you’ll understand) as well as Bon Iver and St. Vincent’s beautiful collaboration in Roslyn – that is if you can handle near-constant squawks of ‘dooooooooooooooooooooooooown’.
Granted, not all of the songs are particularly spectacular as the previously discussed songs and these happen to be the ones which are more suitable for the film’s target audience ie. Meet Me On The Equinox by Death Cab For Cutie – I’ll say no more. I think one song that could be considered weak shouldn’t be entirely disregarded, Band of Skulls’ Friends is light-hearted and fun if you can’t possibly handle the downer that is all the decent songs listed above. Same can be said with Muse’s I Belong To You which I think is almost playfully dramatic.
I think I’ve learnt from this soundtrack to not instantly disregard music simply because of what it’s tied to, and while the film may be a bag of crap (I’ve seen it twice so I’m well informed), the music certainly isn’t. This doesn’t mean I’m going to run out and buy the High School Musical soundtracks though, I’m still allowed some prejudice.
Kate Preston
You can read our review of New Moon here
[...] Read our review of the New Moon soundtrack here [...]
This is brilliant. The most stellar piece of writing to ever exist. Who is this wonderful author spouting such words of musical wisdom, she cannot possibly be human with such mad writing skills.
the Bon Iver and Lyyki Li tracks are really the only ones worth mentioning. AMAZING.
Ooh I got named in this. I stand by my opinion of Radiohead. Oh and it’s my birthday.
The bits of the film with Muse in, Supermassive Blackhole in Twilight (to a game of vampire baseball) and IBTY in New Moon, are completely poor choices. A shame, since Stephanie Myer actually likes their quite good stuff.
As teen soundtracks go, it is at least better than most.