Categories : Country + Western, Music Reviews.
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Rating: 3 / 5 Reviewer: Trent Depue |
Judging a motion picture soundtrack can always be a bit of a tough one, as a number of factors come into play, not the least of which can be that the purpose of the soundtrack is to provide a movie with a score, and not necessarily a music fan with an enlightening musical experience. And with all of that being said, there are two things to examine on Greg Keelor’s Soundtrack to Paul Gross’ upcoming film, Gunless.
The first is how the music suits the film. And as this movie hasn’t come out yet, this will be a presumptuous analysis based on a movie title and minute long trailer. While Greg Keelor’s work with Blue Rodeo may not seem like the job description you may want for a Canadian Western starring Paul Gross, his solo material (and even past work with The Sadies and Cuff the Duke) is far more fitting, and Keelor does a magnificent job writing his score to this end. Subtle changes to repetitive musical themes throughout, while still adding interesting aspects that fit the films theme, it stands to reason that Keelor will succeed in providing Gunless with a great soundtrack.
The second side of this story is how well does this material translate into a listenable record without being broken up by two hours of motion picture? In this case, far from perfectly. At twenty tracks long and just over half an hour, there are nine tracks under a minute long and only two over three minutes, one of which, ‘Don’t Let The Darkness in Your Head,’ is taken directly from Blue Rodeo’s latest studio record, and is the primary source of the aforementioned repetitive musical themes. Furthermore, being 95 percent instrumental does little to help make this record as much a musical experience for a music fan as it is a source for a score.
Far from being unenjoyable, this soundtrack seems to merely suffer from being recorded directly as the songs appear in the film, duration and all. Compared to say, a polar opposite and far more successful musical experience in the Juno soundtrack, the objective of the soundtrack is completely different but hardly a failure given the goal. Overall, Keelor does a great job on something that was likely outside of his comfort zone coming in. It may just be better left heard on the DVD prints rather than CD is all.
