Reviews – Page 97

Pirates of the Carib: At World’s End Soundtrack Review

Music By: Hans Zimmer

The Curse of the Black Pearl (by Klaus Badelt, in collaboration with Hans Zimmer) was fun, Dead Man’s Chest (by Hans Zimmer) was silly, and now with World’s End, Zimmer rounds off his Pirates‘ bounty of soundscapes with a mega flourish-not always gripping, but mostly flourishy, silly and yes, with the swashbuckling swagger so important in a Jack Sparrow film. If ye liked the old themes from the Pirates movies, be warned, there aren’t many reprises of those. Heck, even the Jack Sparrow theme from Dead Man’s Chest makes just fleeting appearances in its original form. Forget about the Klaus Badelt themes, you really need to be alert to pick them up in I Don’t Think Now Is The Best Time and Drink Up Me Hearties. But having said that, these reprises are quite pleasing. Surprisingly, the Tia Dalma theme from Dead Man’s Chest gets more time than Jack Sparrow.
Moving on to original music written for this movie, Zimmer basically wrote two extremely lengthy themes-the Pirates Theme (based on the song Hoist the Colours) and the Love Theme. These, he broke up and wove them really well into the almost every cue. Personally, I found the Love Theme to be more heroic and flourishy than the Pirates Theme. Funny, considering that this was a Pirates movie, not a romantic caper. But, this theme lent the flick a certain grandeur and scale, missing from the first two movies. But then again, maybe this film is really about the love between Will and Elizabeth. Certainly fits in with the surprise ending, that you can see coming just before the climax.
The album starts with Hoist the Colours, which I think is a traditional pirate/seaman’s song (but since I was too lazy to actually check this up, I might well be wrong…), and seeing its use in the film, I get goosebumps each time I listen to it. This gets reprised a number of times, without the vocals. We then move on to Singapore, a pretty decent track which incorporates the East India Company/Beckett theme from Dead Man’s Chest with the theme for the new pirate character, Sao Feng. Multiple Jacks and the Brethren Court are equally silly tracks, having an “off”, out of tune rendition of Jack Sparrow. Seeing that they are for an extremely silly, self centred and moronic bunch of pirates, they actually do make sense in the movie and, on the soundtrack, they can be used to irritate someone, much like the Willy Wonka track from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
I Don’t Think Now Is The Best Time is the big action piece of the movie. Big, in terms of orchestration and length. At 10:46, it’s a wee bit too long. But then, it has good reprises of many of major and minor themes from the previous two movies and, woven exquisitely in to all this is the grand Love Theme. In the movie, it plays out during the climactic fight sequence (which, by the way, is very funny), it is quite brisk. Playing for most of its 10 minute running time, underneath the main orchestra, is a moving line, much in the style of Zimmer’s Da Vinci Code. It certainly adds a bit of extra motion to the whole track.
Drink Up Me Hearties rounds off the album with re-orchestrated He’s A Pirate theme from Curse of the Black Pearl (which, Dead Man’s Chest so sorely lacked). This blossoms into a beautiful rendition of the Love Theme, performed strongly in an epic manner. It comes to a close with final orchestral swell, and the album comes to an end.
Problems with the score: the lack of the reprises, and its slow/choiry tracks (the ones where the Tia Dalma theme gets inordinately long reprises). But mostly, one track: Parlay. WHAT THE HECK IS AN ELECTRIC GUITAR DOING IN A PIRATE MOVIE!?!!! And that too, in such a thinly veiled manner. It’s a western influenced track, an ode to Ennio Morricone, but still, you can’t just so blatantly have an electric guitar in a movie set so clearly in the pre electricity era. Dead Man’s Chest also had something like this-what everyone mistook to be electric guitars in the Kracken theme. Instead, it turned out to be a regular orchestra pumped out through a guitar amp. Besides the point. What I really mean is that that track used the electric amp effect so well. While in this, when I first heard it, I thought that something was wrong with PVR’s audio system, that music from some other movie was being played. And then, the dialogues begun, and horror, horror, I realized that that trashy piece of populist writing was indeed Zimmer’s, and that too, for this movie only.
Well, mostly the soundtrack was a pleasant listening experience, Parlay notwithstanding. Certainly not the best Zimmer effort, but quite good. It brought the swashbuckling pirates element (which really was missing in the first two soundtracks) into this franchise, and for that I’d recommend this soundtrack. That, and the amazing Love Theme….

(42) Minutes To Midnight: The Linkin Park Album Review

My rating of Linkin Park’s Minutes To Midnight album: 6.9 / 10

I got Linkin Park’s latest album Minutes To Midnight yesterday, thanks to my pal Prashanth. Here’s a track-by-track review first.

Wake (2 / 5): The shortest and a vocal free track. You’ll have to crank up your speaker volume right up to max to catch anything. Sounds more like an intro for The Matrix. The reason why I’m giving it a 2 it because nothing is very audible until a large part has been played, and then, the rest of the good part is too short.
Given Up (5 / 5): More hardcore metal intro, followed by typical LP style. A heavier track than the rest, and I liked the lyrics too (because I’m pretty much in the same introspective mood these days). It’s the BEST song out of the album by far, and I’d probably add it to my fave songs playlist too.
Leave Out All The Rest (5 / 5): The song is a very good advice to the music label executives who handled this album – leave out rest of the crap from this album. Again, it’s a newer style, more Simple Plan than Linkin Park, but it’s really good.
Bleed It Out (5 / 5): Nice song, the clap track sounds as if it’s meant to be some soccer anthem. Repetitive at parts. Typical LP style, and good.
Shadow Of The Day (4 / 5): A slow track. Sorta romantic. The vocals end early, leaving you thinking that the song is over, but there’s a good bit at the end which is only instrumental.
What I’ve Done (3 / 5): The most publicized song of the album, was released earlier. It’s sort of midway between the hardcore LP style and the new slower variety they’re trying out. Intro is lot like the sort of music the use to start of the credits after trashy horror movies. Definitely not worth making the flagship song of the album. I just don’t GET how this pathetic song can make it to the top of charts.
Hands Held High (2 / 5): I don’t like rap (this is one’s mostly rap), so my judgement might be biased, but I didn’t like this one that much. The instrumental sounds as if it was done by a one-man (one-boy?) school band with chorus’s in between which seem inspired by the Mr Bean theme song. Very confused song, with the last part not rap at all.
No More Sorrow (2 / 5): Starts off as an attempt to convert the theme of The Terminator into a funeral song (which means it doesn’t match with the title). Instruments are more Dimmu Borgir than Linkin Park.
Valentine’s Day (3 / 5): A slower, softer track. Doesn’t use the typical LP chorus style too much.
In Between (5 / 5): Looking at the track title, it should probably have been the 5 / 6th track. It’s ABSOLUTELY unlike any other LP track you would have heard. Vocals get highest priority and it’s a really slow song. Out of the different styles tried out, this ones probably the best.
In Pieces (3 / 5): An attempt at mixing a slow song with faster rock, and falls flat on its face.
The Little Things Give You Away (5 / 5): After a string of bad songs towards the end, the album finally ends with a better song. This is the longest track in the album – about 6 minutes long – and has long vocals-free stretches, which frankly are pretty good. I liked the end of the song a lot – nicely done, but it’s more an accomplishment on part of Hahn, I guess.

Overall, it seems as if LP or their music label got too greedy, and tried to attract more sales by putting in more genres (this one was co-produced by Mike Shinoda, BTW). That messed up this album – hardcore LP fans who liked their rap-metal-punk sort of style appealing will be disappointed; while those of not interested in LP probably won’t buy it anyway. It’s mostly the older style ones which I liked more. And hey, listen more carefully, and you’ll find that it’s not only Chester Bennington who’s done the vocals, but even Mike Shinoda has chipped in, although Chester is of course, still the lead. It also suffers because nobody expects such bad things from LP, not after Meteora and Hybrid Theory. Minutes To Midnight simply becomes an album for collection’s sake for LP fans, but some songs are really good. And this is something you should have, even if it doesn’t quite touch the high standards of their earlier albums.

PS: Wondering about the title of the post? Just have a look at WHEN this was posted… 😉