Soundtracks are impossible to judge without seeing movies themselves. Rating anything as a Portastatic album, I like to hear how much higher Mac McCaughan's voice has gotten. I like to see how many Superchunk alums are involved. I like to hear how many times birds are referenced. I like to see when the first poppy rock-out accompanies the first aggrandized yet seemingly necessary guitar solo.
When a band (or solo artist as is essentially the case) writes an instrumental soundtrack, immediately you have no basis to compare, contrast or even consider their work to be anything but a concept (that you have no access to). So the back story is lost, the concept is lost, the understanding of iconoclasm is lost, but the musicianship remains.
Enough petty grievances with soundtrack reviews. It's a quality set of choppy pop songs with a wonderful array of instrumentation. Portastatic having done this for "Looking for Leonard," McCaughan's ideal set up is present. The standard set of effects and rock quartet instruments are arranged to make way for French horns, synth, oboes and the like. The songs could stand alone as individual intros and outros for any Portastatic album and Mac has a propensity for finding the balance between cheesy hooks and effective pop-laden strumming.
It's all there: the repetitive strings setting up the Mark Mothersbaugh-esque ramblings, the songs that lend to their placement in the movie—"Is that Mars," "Lively Chase" and "Snake Music" among others. As the album progresses, it becomes a perfect nap record or an understated summer drive-worthy collection, but to consider it the new Portastatic album would be laughable. If nothing else, smooth-voiced yet bumbling college DJs will have something to quietly accentuate their Public Service Announcements this fall, and Superchunk/Portastatic fans will have some new transitional mix tape fodder.
Much like Eric Bachman's "Short Careers": songs for the film "Ball of Wax," these songs are an inspiration and a muse to the artist, but just a transition to something new for the listener. Interestingly enough, though, Portastatic's eye for projects should remain open, and the idea of reviewing impractical ventures seems more appealing now than it ever did. Not bad for a concept unseen |