New Moon Original Soundtrack
(Warners)
Stephenie Meyer’s ubiquitous vampire novels are already becoming the gothic horror Harry Potter, a humungous franchise that will sweep peripheral talents into its coven. Such was the swelling anticipation for New Moon, the follow-up to Twilight, that music supervisor Alexandra Patsavas seems to have been allocated a blank cheque to cherry pick from the bigger hitters in the credible world of indie rock for this lavish soundtrack, perhaps the reason everyone from Death Cab For Cutie, Muse and The Killers have lined up to compose and contribute.
Accepting that the film is a piece of nonsense featuring a bequiffed pretty boy with a studio tan, we can confirm that the New Moon soundtrack is getting a favourable review on the basis that the stellar cast has already made the prospect of seeing ‘Teenporn II’ palatable. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, themselves creatures of the night, gently fingerpick a sombre and remorseful bloodsucker’s confession on ‘Done All Wrong’. Death Cab’s exclusively written ‘Meet Me On The Equinox’ is the kind of earnest, widescreen romance they thrive in. ‘Hearing Damage’ is Thom Yorke in electro-dirge mode, and packs more spooky atmosphere than a séance in a haunted house. The show-stealer? Possibly. Grizzly Bear swoon away in the shadows, and Bon Ivor conjures up his own choral ghosts. Even Editors, who are to Joy Division what Flora is to Kerrygold, get the tone right.
Maybe vampire stories are prime song-writing fodder, something an independently minded, literate artist can really sink their teeth into (sorry). Rock ‘n’ roll and the vampire myth have joint custody over the themes of sin, sex, god and mortality, begging the question, why, if the results can be this good, don’t the two cross paths more often?
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