Usually, soundtracks that contain both music “from” and “inspired by” a particular film send chills down my spine. As a serious fan of film scores, I don’t have much use for song-based soundtracks. They simply don’t interest me.
There are, of course, a few exceptions. The soundtrack to Forrest Gump, for example, was chock full of fantastic songs from a bygone era. The soundtracks to films like Top Gun and Dirty Dancing provided us with Top Ten hits for most of the 1980s. These are great soundtracks.
The soundtrack to Spiderman 3 is similarly great, although its songs won’t necessarily go on to become Top Ten classics -- “cult” classics, maybe, but not Top Ten. As with previous Spiderman soundtrack albums, this album is heavy on songs that follow a particular alt-rock pattern. This is good; there’s nothing on this disc that seems particularly out of place. My two favorite cuts, “Red River” by The Walkmen and “Portrait of a Summer Thief” by Sounds Under Radio, both follow the entire soundtrack’s overall sensibility. These are bands led by twentysomethings that like to make thoughtful, sometimes intense, U2-based rock and roll songs. There is nothing wrong with this. Although all of these songs (with the exception of “The Twist”) were recorded specifically for the soundtrack album, they would all fit well on any of these bands’ future releases. (In fact, Pete Yorn’s song “Undercover,” which appeared on a previous Spiderman soundtrack album, also made its way onto Yorn’s recent album Nightcrawler -- the precedent has been set, Snow Patrol!)
I might add that I am not a huge fan of a lot of these bands (Yeah Yeah Yeas, Black Mountain, Jet, and the like) because I have a bit of trouble telling them apart from one another. But that doesn’t mean that these songs are any less likeable: they’re well played, they have catchy choruses, and they flow well from one to another. Simon Dawes’s “Scared of Myself” is a crunching mid-tempo rocker, as is “A Letter from St. Jude” by Wasted Youth. If these bands are your cup of tea, then Spiderman 3 would be a good investment. I congratulate Sam Raimi and company for putting together a soundtrack album that does Spidey proud. |