As luck would have it, Elliott Smith went and died before the film or its soundtrack ever came to completion. Needless to say, Thumbsucker director Mike Mills was left in a bit of a quandary; how best to portray the wretched melancholy of adolescence as depicted in the film without succumbing to said melancholy and committing suicide. Solution? Rope in Tim Delaughter of universal sunshine gang The Polyphonic Sprees and his 50-strong ensemble of white-robed misfits. Apocalyptic FBI assisted massacre aside, nothing could possibly go wrong. Or could it?
So what does the usual coming-age drama OST yield? Well it’s a pretty mixed bag when you actually do the research. Ferris Bueller had everything from the ‘Edge Of Forever’ by the effortlessly fey and magical Dream Academy to ‘Twist and Shout’. Blue Velvet’ came over all anachronistic and retro by responding with ‘In Dreams’ from Roy Orbison and Julee Cruise’s ‘Mysteries Of Love’. Donnie Darko raided an 80’s indie catacomb of classics that included ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ and Echo and The Bunnymen’s ‘Killing Moon, whilst lo-fi, gritty teen-flick ‘Kids’ pitched Daniel Johnston’s ‘Casper’ by way of angsty polemic. On face value; a pretty mixed bag. On closer scrutiny, however, you begin to see a pattern: the whimsical and the oft-maligned generally plays a significant part; music you’d ordinarily too embarrassed to declare. For some – a kitsch fifties tune, for others, Duran Duran. Whatever the contents of the bag, one thing must be certain; it must be your bag and yours only. This is, afterall, what every coming-age movie is generally about; things that don’t quite sit tight with the mainstream. Something out of kilter. Something hovering nervously between peep-show booth and nursery. And what better to portray this than the incurable whimsy and fancies of tracks like ‘Scream & Shout’ and ‘What Would You Let Go?’ Outwardly juvenile. Inwardly profound.
To be fair, the bittersweet mix of childlike and melancholic works spectacularly well. The three tracks submitted posthumously by Elliott Smith (including covers of Big Star’s ‘Thirteen’ and Cat Steven’s ‘Trouble’) provide the burden, whilst De Laughter’s bare and unsophisticated sketches (‘Wonderful For You’ and ‘Sourness Makes It Right’) provide the childlike relief and innocence.
For those expecting the usual swelling pomp from DeLaughter and the gang, be warned; most of the tracks here amount to little more than cursory and momentary plans and drafts, pared down from their usual progressive bent by the rudimentary nature of the brief; but to a large extent, these eerily pretty tunes are all the better for it, providing an honesty and immediacy sometimes absent from DeLaughter’s epics.
Short and sweet but largely satisfying