Music Reviews

Doctor Who: Eve Of The Daleks – music by Segun Akinola

A bit of pastoral acoustic guitar is almost the last thing you’d expect to here from any soundtrack whose title ends in the words “…of the Daleks”, and yet here we are, with the first of the “series 13 specials” leading up to the end of Jodie Whittaker’s tenure as the Doctor (whose music has already been reviewed here).

Things quickly get more modern, though, with a sense of technological urgency defining much of the score to Eve Of The Daleks. The lower-register minimalism works wonders when contrasted with outbursts of menacing brass, but there’s another kind of minimalism on display in some tracks – particularly “Deja Vu” and “Not A Great Plan” – where things slow down, there’s a little bit more breathing room between notes rather than the insistent bass synth ostinato running through most of the tracks. Particularly in “Not A Great Plan” and “Took You Long Enough”, when the music resumes its slower, acoustic feel, with the addition of a double bass, it’s almost jazzy – might be Doctor Who, might be an episode of The Avengers.

Much of Eve Of The Daleks‘ musical landscape lies in the tension between those two modes: acoustic vs. electronic, less predictable rhythms vs. a steadily percolating synth bass line, and ultimately, as the story itself dictates, human vs. machine. Really a simple idea, but it serves the story remarkably well.

Though “A Brilliant Plan” and “Important Stuff To Do” shake things up with some rapid-fire strings to accompany the score’s synthetic pulse, and “Fireworks” closes things out with a more relaxed sense that all has turned out as it should (and the return of the jazzy acoustic motif), there just isn’t much of a musical exclamation point at the end. The previous end-of-year special (and previous Dalek episode score) Revolution Of The Daleks provided that kind of major shift to accompany the exit of Ryan and Graham, but Eve Of The Daleks just doesn’t have that kind of catharsis at the end of its story or its score. It’s just another day at the office, nobody’s leaving, and the status quo is restored. Without that, Eve Of The Daleks just quietly ends. An interesting episode, and an interesting score, but as a standalone listening experience, it’s the least remarkable of the series 13 specials.

1. Here We Are Again (02:17)
2. Out Of Service (03:27)
3. I Am Not Nick (02:33)
4. Deja Vu (03:39)
5. The Correction (03:06)
6. Sorry Sorry Sorry (01:09)
7. Not A Great Plan (06:57)
8. Took You Long Enough (08:44)
9. We Will Not Stop (03:50)
10. We Go Again And We Win (04:01)
11. The Doctor Cannot Save You (03:29)
12. A Brilliant Plan (03:56)
13. Important Stuff To Do (04:11)
14. Fireworks (03:06)

Released by: Silva Screen Records
Release date: December 2, 2022
Total running time: 54:21

The Orville: Season 1 – music by Bruce Broughton, Joel McNeely, John Debney, and Andrew Cottee

It seems like it was not too long ago that I was gushing about Bruce Broughton having a good handle on how to make a space adventure series sound really epic, and even though I was talking about the doomed second season of Buck Rogers from 1981, I feel like the fact that he went on to craft the main theme and the pilot episode score for The Orville makes my point for me. Spoiler: he’s still got a good handle on how to make a space adventure series sound really epic.

Of course, it helps to have the right series to score, and it’s probably the worst-kept secret in Hollywood that, on the surface, The Orville might just be the most spectacular Star Trek: The Next Generation fan film series ever produced. Though Fox was quick to play up Seth MacFarlane’s involvement and tried to pitch it as a comedy, MacFarlane quickly showed his hand just a few episodes in: he wanted his own Trek spinoff, in every way but name, complete with complex moral issues and serious storytelling and character development. And to help sell that, MacFarlane insisted on enough of a music budget to hire some of the biggest orchestral ensembles that Hollywood TV scoring had seen in years, along with a mix of composers from legendary projects and some rising talent.

While only soundtrack nerds like myself might remember Broughton in the same breath with Buck Rogers, it’s no secret that his score for the 1998 big-screen revival Lost In Space was one of that film’s most redeeming qualities. And it’s really that sound that Broughton brings to the pilot episode, Old Wounds – soaring space adventure music building on his noble, nautical theme tune as a motif. While “Krill Attack / Shuttle Escape” kicks the amount of butt that you’d expect a Broughton action cue to kick, “Emergency Docking” is the real thrill ride from the pilot.

Joel McNeely arrived in the second episode as one of the show’s regular composers; with such projects as The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and the score-without-a-movie project Star Wars: Shadows Of The Empire behind him, McNeely’s an ideal pick for this series. His score for If The Stars Should Appear is moody, mysterious, and a marvelous stylistic homage (if an obvious one) to Jerry Goldsmith’s “V’Ger music” from Star Trek: The Motion Picture. That mention is a good time to point out that what differentiates The Orville from its inspiration is that, as a musician himself, Seth MacFarlane knows the value of a strong, memorable score, and of occasionally letting the music carry the picture. Music this distinctive and bold would never have made it to the screen in the Rick Berman era of Star Trek, a period that saw perfectly capable and talented composers having to try to sneak anything thematically strong under the radar of a producer who essentially wanted sonic wallpaper. The Orville’s music isn’t wallpaper; it isn’t more concerned with the rumble of the ship’s engines than it is with music that conveys emotions, and MacFarlane gives his composers a free hand to express that. About A Girl gets a rollicking start (and a rollicking interlude in “Arriving On Moclus”), but is more contemplative overall, befitting the story where the show really made clear what mix of drama-with-occasional-comedy it would be embracing in the future. His Krill score is considerably more active, with a John Williams flavor in both action and suspense scenes, and a deliciously unsettling, musically-unresolved ending in the “New Enemies” cue closing the first disc. Into The Fold, the first McNeely score on disc two, starts with a killer shuttle-crash opening and builds menace from there with horror-movie-ready action cues and quiter, but still menacing, passages. McNeely rounds things out on the second disc with the quieter score for Mad Idolatry, an episode more concerned with landing its concept and its message than attempting to be the season’s action showcase. Debney’s score supports that sets the mood without getting in the way.

John Debney comes out swinging with his first score, Command Performance, which again has stylistic nods to Goldsmith (complete with the Blaster Beam!) as well as Horner and Williams, and fireworks aplenty. Pria also opens with a bang, and a Williams-esque one at that, with some ominous passages as the crew – well, everyone except Captain Mercer, who’s smitten with her – begins to suspect that enigmatic visitor Captain Pria Levesque (played by very promotable guest star Charlize Theron) is not telling them the whole story of where she comes from. Things get overly synthesized for the first time with Majority Rule, sounding almost like Alan Silvestri’s work from the MacFarlane-produced Cosmos series. Though it’s a surreal romantic comedy episode, Cupid’s Dagger still gets a deceptively straightforward dramatic treatment from Debney (though only two tracks and seven minutes’ worth). Debney pulls double duty, also scoring the following episode, Firestorm, which he helps turn into an action blockbuster (and quite possibly my favorite score from the first season). Firestorm comes out swinging from the first second and doesn’t let up. I’m not of the opinion that a film composer should be judged only by their action music – quite the contrary, actually – but Debney drenches it with diverse action and horror stylings aplenty, making it his showpiece for The Orville’s first year. (And note: more Blaster Beam.)

Andrew Cottee, an internationally-known arranger who had already done some work on MacFarlane’s 2019 album Once In A While, gets to sink his teeth into a full-length episode score with New Dimensions, a late-season episode that was already conceptually challenging. Dealing with the three-dimensional ship and crew being pulled into a two-dimensional realm of space in which they can only hope to survive for a short time before they have to exit again, New Dimensions is one of those “how do you even express that musically?” exercises. The score Cottee delivered for this episode does not sounds like someone’s first effort for hour-long dramatic TV – it sounds like he’s been doing this for years. There’s a sense of awe and wonder to the “two-dimensional” scenes, and a restrained sense of menace elsewhere that reminds me of the original Star Trek with its economical and yet forceful arrangements. Delivering more “oomph” with fewer players is a real gift in film scoring, and it’s all down to careful arrangement. Cottee has that gift; I look forward to hearing more from him.

As musically inclined and adept as Seth MacFarlane is, whether he would be a composer’s greatest collaborator or greatest liability rests on a delicate tipping point. He obviously had a clear vision for what he wanted The Orville to sound like, picked the composers who could make that happen, and both encouraged them and was able to give them a detailed idea of what he wanted. The fact that all of the show’s composers returned to contribute to its later seasons would seem to be an indication of a good working atmosphere; it certainly produced eminently listenable results.

Disc 1
1. The Orville Main Title (01:04)

      

   Old Wounds – music by Bruce Broughton

2. Shuttle to the Ship (01:54)
3. She Requested It / Departing for Landing (01:09)
4. Krill Attack / Shuttle Escape (04:14)
5. Emergency Docking (02:27)
6. Kelly Has a Plan / Asking Kelly to Stay (03:51)

      

   If The Stars Should Appear – music by Joel McNeely

7. The Bio-Ship / Exploring the Hull (02:22)
8. Exploring the Bio-Ship (02:45)
9. Finding Alara / Space Battle (02:53)
10. Dorahl / The Roof Opens (04:05)

       

    Command Performance – music by John Debney

11. Distress Signal Received / Alara Freaks Out / Explosion (05:54)
12. Alara Gets the Cold Shoulder / Approaching Calivon (03:52)
13. Extermination Process Continues / Bortus Hatches His Egg (02:39)

       

    About A Girl – music by Joel McNeely

14. Western Simulation (01:01)
15. Asteroid Destroyed / Relieved Of Duty (01:07)
16. Arriving On Moclus (01:43)
17. Trip To The Mountains (02:16)
18. Tribunal Adjourned / Epilogue (03:27)

       

    Pria – music by John Debney

19. Rescuing Pria (03:51)
20. Searching Pria’s Room / Dark Matter Storm / Navigating The Storm (04:06)
21. Approaching The Coordinates / Isaac Saves The Crew (03:20)
22. Pria’s Theme (01:41)

       

    Krill – music by Joel McNeely

23. Distress Call (01:29)
24. Krill Attack The Orville (02:49)
25. Bomb Found (04:54)
26. Intruder Alert / Preparing The Weapon (02:59)
27. Turning On The Lights / New Enemies (02:29)

Disc 2
Majority Rule – music by John Debney
1. Lysella Wakes Up / Looks Like Earth / Rescue Mission (01:39)
2. John Gets Arrested / Alara Seems Suspicious (02:05)
3. Ed Has A Plan (01:33)
4. Bringing Lysella Aboard / Casting The Votes / Their World Can Do Better (06:06)

      

   Into The Fold – music by Joel McNeely

5. Sucked In (02:44)
6. Claire Breaks Out (01:26)
7. The Fight (01:21)
8. Claire Returns To The Wreck (02:11)
9. The Attack (01:55)
10. Claire Thanks Isaac (01:21)

       

    Cupid’s Dagger – music by John Debney

11. Archaeologist Arrives / Claire Visits Yaphit / Claire Kisses Yaphit (03:12)
12. Fleets Approach / War Before Peace / Cleared For Duty / Darulio Departs (04:38)

       

    Firestorm – music by John Debney

13. Plasma Storm / It Was Late Evening (03:08)
14. Alara Blows Off Steam / There Was A Clown (03:04)
15. Alara Hallucinates / Deserted Ship (06:55)
16. Cannot End Simulation / Back To Normal (04:03)

       

    New Dimensions – music by Andrew Cottee

17. Damage Report / What Happened To The Plants? (02:00)
18. Krill Ships Approaching (02:30)
19. Within The Anomaly / Time To Reflect / Quantum Bubble Is Deteriorating (02:25)
20. Engaging Tractor Beam (02:17)
21. Mission Complete / Commander Lamarr (02:48)

       

    Mad Idolatry – music by Joel McNeely

22. Investigating An Anomaly (01:09)
23. Emergency Landing (03:41)
24. Searching The Planet (02:38)
25. Walking Through Town (02:21)
26. Spread The Word (01:17)
27. Isaac Steps Up / Civilization Restored (03:14)
28. The Orville End Titles (00:35)

Released by: La-La Land Records
Release date: February 6, 2019
Disc one running time: 76:07
Disc two running time: 74:02
Total running time: 2:30:09

Star Wars: Tales From The Galaxy’s Edge

Poor Disney. You know, despite the fact that I realize that they’re a gigantic media conglomerate that no one’s really supposed to root for, I can’t help but feel for them. Opening an in-person Star Wars attraction had to be very high on their list of reasons to purchase Lucasfilm outright; after all, Star Tours had been doing fairly brisk business since the 1980s. Surely an entire Star Wars theme park would be the most obvious money-maker in the world for Disney – never mind movies and merch, Galaxy’s Edge would probably make back most of the astronomical purchase price of Lucasfilm by itself. And then COVID happened and emptied it out. And then they overcompensated and overshot the mark with the far-too-expensive-for-most-fans Galactic Starcruiser attraction, which remains perennially underbooked. Just as the sequel movies made depressingly clear that our beloved space heroes could find no lasting peace, this chain of real-world events just underlined that you can’t have nice things in the Star Wars universe.

But hey, let’s talk about this soundtrack’s very, very good reason to exist: we get to hear Star Wars a la Bear McCreary, which is the kind of thing one hears is the stuff of days long remembered. McCreary, of course, made his very splashy entry into the ears of genre soundtrack fans with the early aughts revival of Battlestar Galactica, to which he brought a pan-cultural sensibility that was telegraphing, from the first season, what the story eventually told us at its end: these people from other worlds are where all of our world’s music comes from. So yes, you do, in fact, hear every Earth culture in there. In a lot of ways, honestly, McCreary’s scores for each episode told the story more succinctly than the scripts did. He’s since put his very audible musical stamp on such things as Outlander, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., The Walking Dead, Lord Of The Rings: The Ring Of Power, and Foundation, as well as modern big-screen revivals of Godzilla, Child’s Play, and more. McCreary builds worlds in his music, sometimes better than the scripts that inspire his music.

When Disney bought Lucasfilm and made it clear that more Star Wars was on the way, of course we expected John Williams to return for the sequel movies (and he did, for all of them). But then side-story movies started happening, and it became clear that Williams’ presumptive absolute lock on the franchise’s musical sound was on the verge of expiring. Rogue One went through two composers, meaning that movie has an entire Alexandre Desplat score we’ve never gotten to hear. Solo was an odd musical duck: an experienced composer, new to the franchise, under the obligation to refer to a freshly-penned Williams theme for young Han Solo (an arrangement also in place for the more recent Obi-Wan Kenobi streaming series). But after Solo, and mere weeks before The Rise Of Skywalker, came The Mandalorian, with a very clear musical vision and a very clear message: John Williams does not have to be the only one who can do this.

But the moment that other composers started entering Williams’ well-constructed sandbox, with its established classical/romantic lexicon, I started wondering when McCreary might enter the chat. One of my other picks, Michael Giacchino, landed a Star Wars assignment almost instantly, replacing Desplat’s Rogue One score. But – allowing for the fact that his schedule with TV and movie projects alike keeps him incredibly busy – when would McCreary get to play in that sandbox and bring his impeccable sense of musical world building with him? The answer came in late 2021, at a time when Disney – trying desperately to keep Galaxy’s Edge alive as its own brand at a time when it still wasn’t the greatest idea to actually go there – created a virtual reality universe built around the Galaxy’s Edge storyline. Now you could stay home and explore that world without paying travel expenses or contracting a deadly disease. This was not only its own new product, but was also served as a promo piece for the “real” Galaxy’s Edge. And would it have its own soundtrack? Oh, of course it would – even Williams had contributed a symphonic suite for the opening of the attraction itself.

But other composers would be devising the music for the VR attraction – enter the very interesting combination of McCreary, Joseph Trapanese (Tron Legacy, Tron Uprising), and Danny Piccione (sound designer for a previous Star Wars VR game). McCreary is an obvious composer to bring to the Star Wars party; the lengthy opening track reveals that he’s adept at honoring Williams’ musical lexicon while also bringing more modern sonics into play. (If you found the synths in The Mandalorian’s early episodes off-putting, this will probably be more to your liking.) “Tara Rashin” not only sees McCreary bringing his trademark thundering percussion to the table, but also a theremin-like synth. More woodwinds, percussion, and a mysterious sound accompany the “Guavian Death Gang”, characters glimpsed briefly in The Force Awakens, who I always assumed probably killed people by pushing a button and burying their victims under an avalanche of fresh guavas. Hell of a tasty way to go. “Baron Attsmun” is also swathed in mystery, but has more string-driven grandeur. “Dok-Ondar Treasures” is very much a throwback to the style that won McCreary so many fans in the Galactica days; it’s safe to say that if you know Bear chiefly from Battlestar, you’ll be pleased with his contributions here.

But wait! Joseph Trapanese is also here. He did a lot of heavy lifting behind the scenes for the Tron Legacy score attributed to Daft Punk (and then proved, by effortlessly scoring the animated spinoff series Tron Uprising, that he was deservedly the co-author of Tron Legacy‘s sound). His first three tracks bring something of the “big wall of ominous brass and pulsing synth notes” feel of his Tron work, though obviously without using the exact sounds so closely associated with that universe. It’s definitely a more synth-oriented approach.

Danny Piccione takes up the middle of the album, offering up shorter selections with more of a pop music sensibility; you could dance to this stuff, though he’s clearly trying to go for the “unconventional used of earhly instrumentation standing in for alien instrumentation” feel of, say, the original Cantina Band music. All five of his tracks tend to top out at around the three minute mark. These are all fun in-universe listens, not a million miles away from the “previously unreleased Cantina Band music” remit of the two Oga’s Cantina: R3X’s Playlist albums. “Azu Ragga” is the best of these tracks, succeeding in hitting an otherworldly but still tuneful balance.

Trapanese returns for five more tracks, including the album’s longest, “IG-88”, clocking in at over 15 minutes; again, appropriately enough for a bounty hunter droid, the technological precision of his Tron work is a useful frame of reference for what to expect here. A more orchestral tone is struck with “Life Wind” and “Sacred Garden”, which is the closest that Trapanese gets to the Williams wheelhouse of most prior Star Wars music. “Patience” sees the return of the slightly-reminiscent-of-Tron synth work, while “Fountain – The Message” does away with pulsating synth bass lines.

McCreary brings things to a close with three final tracks, “The First Order” giving the sequel era’s big had a theme that isn’t borrowed from previous iterations of the franchise. “I Would Do It Again” strikes a much more hopeful note, and by the time the end credits wrap up, you’ve heard a whole hour and a half of Star Wars music without a single Williams theme.

In the interests of full disclosure, I haven’t played Tales From The Galaxy’s Edge itself. I’m going entirely by how enjoyable its music is. Kind of a weird way to judge a soundtrack, sure, but if the music does anything, it actually makes me want to play the game (you know, if I owned any VR gear). Surely it’s quite an experience if it merits the considerable talents of these three composers. Also, let’s set these gentlemen loose on some movies and streaming shows. Because they just spent the running time of this album proving that any one of them is worthy of the task. And because this taste of Star Wars a la Bear McCreary is an indication that we could have a whole feast.

1. Batuu Wilderness by Bear McCreary (11:05)
2. Tara Rashin by Bear McCreary (02:55)
3. Guavian Death Gang by Bear McCreary (07:48)
4. Baron Attsmun by Bear McCreary (06:49)
5. Dok-Ondar Treasures by Bear McCreary (03:31)
6. Age of Jedi by Joseph Trapanese (03:33)
7. Shadows by Joseph Trapanese (04:59)
8. Ady’s Theme – Hyperdrive by Joseph Trapanese (02:51)
9. Pinteeka Dub by Danny Piccione (02:37)
10. Desert Dance by Danny Piccione (02:33)
11. Ghenza Shuffle by Danny Piccione (03:04)
12. Cyinarc by Danny Piccione (02:25)
13. Azu Ragga by Danny Piccione (03:09)
14. IG-88 by Joseph Trapanese (15:25)
15. Life Wind by Joseph Trapanese (02:55)
16. Sacred Garden by Joseph Trapanese (04:07)
17. Patience by Joseph Trapanese (01:54)
18. Fountain – The Message by Joseph Trapanese (01:27)
19. The First Order by Bear McCreary (02:49)
20. I Would Do It Again by Bear McCreary (03:18)
21. Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge End Credits by Bear McCreary (02:37)

Released by: Walt Disney Records
Release date: December 3, 2021
Total running time: 1:31:40

Star Trek: Picard Season 3 – music by Stephen Barton and Frederik Wiedmann

The third and final season of Star Trek: Picard has now unspooled in full on Paramount Plus, and its soundtrack is also now readily available. The third season was heavily promoted, promising a full reunion of the crew of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and late in the season, even miraculously brought back the Next Generation’s beloved Enterprise from what we’d all assumed was its final resting place on the planet onto whose surface it crashed in 1994’s Star Trek: Generations. Of course, to bring all of the characters back to their original places on that iconic bridge, there had to be a tremendous threat that they’d risk everything to fight, and perhaps predictably, that turned out to be the Borg, a well-worn Star Trek foe getting its third wildly different treatment in as many consecutive seasons of Picard. Whether it all holds together as a story without relying on dropping nostalgia bombs on the audience to distract them from the predictability of the plot – look, space squirrel! – is something I suspect fans and critics will be debating for years to come. In the meantime, the actors got to work together one more time, save the universe one more time, and pay their mortgages.

Into this fray walked two composers new to the franchise. Where Jeff Russo – also the resident composer of Star Trek: Discovery – had performed similar duties for Picard’s first and second seasons, giving those proceedings a somewhat more contemplative feel with the obligatory ramping-up-to-maximum-orchestral-anxiety required by end-of-act and end-of-episode breaks, Picard’s showrunners opted to bring in some fresh talent for the show’s last season. It’s also possible that they were looking to bring in talent that wouldn’t balk at the producers’ requests to reference Jerry Goldsmith and other previous Star Trek composers often. (There’s less money to be made from a new arrangement of someone else’s composition than there is from composing something completely original, but make no mistake, with all of the other easter eggs in the show, the producers of Picard make it clear they wanted to hear Goldsmith themes and hear them often.) What a spot to be in: your name is appearing in a high-profile streaming show with the weight of the expectations of the entire franchise on your shoulders, but what you’ve been asked to do is play Jerry Goldsmith’s greatest hits, with some stylistic nods to James Horner’s nautical stylings from Star Trek II. What a musical Kobayashi Maru scenario. (And one that’s likely to keep repeating itself as various long-running IPs play the nostalgia card more blatantly.)

The good news is that the two composers get quite a few original licks in during their sprints between the Goldsmith-ian goalposts. Barton, who did the music for the game Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and previously worked with Picard showrunner Terry Matalas on Syfy’s series adaptation of 12 Monkeys (of which Matalas was also the showrunner), and Wiedmann, whose credits include numerous DC Comics direct-to-video animation projects, are no strangers to the epic side of the genre, and they bring that sound in bucketfuls. Rapid-fire brass runs, sinister bass notes, and the requisite strings are all there in abundance, along with a very few fleeting hints of the legendary Blaster Beam, but when it’s time for Picard and company to save the day, the Goldsmith theme from Star Trek: The Motion Picture (adapted to serve as the theme for The Next Generation’s TV run) returns, along with hints of Goldsmith’s Star Trek: First Contact Theme. Ironically, it’s everything that the weekly episode scores for Next Generation were strictly forbidden to be by that show’s showrunner: loud, thematic, percussive, and developing Goldsmith’s theme(s) as a motif. Courage’s Star Trek theme is quoted occasionally as well, and especially in the suite of material from the first episode, there are audible references to the style, if not necessarily the melodies, of James Horner’s Star Trek II score. In tracks like “Blood In The Water” there are even hints of Don Davis’ action music stylings from The Matrix trilogy.

Some of the best-utilized quotes are the most understated: the track “Legacies”, accompanying the lovingly languid survey of the ships in Geordi’s Fleet Museum, quotes Dennis McCarthy’s Deep Space Nine theme, Courage’s original series theme, Goldsmith’s Star Trek: Voyager theme, and Leonard Rosenman’s theme from Star Trek IV (as that movie’s recovered Klingon ship is glimpsed), all in the space of three minutes with a lovely subtlety (which is good, because the scene it accompanied was not a thing of subtely, bringing the story to a standstill to wallow in its nostalgia grace notes). The Rosenman theme – and indeed, that movie’s entire underrated score – is often omitted from the Star Trek musical canon, and it’s nice to hear it reclaim its place. Maximum Goldsmithification resumes with the track “Make It So”, unveiling the restored Enterprise-D.

It’s all nicely put together, but it reminds me of when, in the 1990s, with my ridiculously massive 18-disc Pioneer magazine CD changer loaded down with every available Star Trek TV and film soundtrack, I would hit “shuffle” and just bask in it. What I liked about Russo’s approach was that it was very much in line with Star Trek: Picard’s original remit to move the character, and his universe, forward into a new context, filled with new and sometimes less-than-sympathetic characters we hadn’t met before. It was something new. Both this season of the show, and its soundtrack, try very hard to hit shuffle play on Star Trek’s greatest hits, and so a lot of it sounds like something you’ve heard before, which does a disservice to the decent original material that Barton and Wiedmann did manage to squeeze in between the musical references. The point of Picard, the series, in its original formulation, was to use one character as a jumping-off point into new territory for the franchise. This season seemed like a decisive step away from that goal. I wonder what we might have gotten if the two talented composers hired for this gig were told to avoid all the Jerry Goldsmith references and chart their own course.

1. Beverly Crusher (3:02)
2. Old Communicator (1:58)
3. Hello, Beautiful (1:57)
4. Leaving Spacedock (3:44)
5. I Like That Seven! (3:29)
6. Breaking the Beam (3:59)
7. The Shrike (3:34)
8. Picard’s Answer (4:08)
9. Riker and Jack (2:08)
10. Call Me Number One (2:02)
11. No Win Scenario (3:57)
12. Blood in the Water (2:58)
13. Let’s Go Home (3:24)
14. Flying Blind (5:51)
15. A New Family (4:16)
16. Klingons Never Disappoint (5:32)
17. I Do See You (5:26)
18. Legacies (3:15)
19. Evolution (2:44)
20. La Forges (2:08)
21. Invisible Rescue (3:34)
22. Catch Me First (2:32)
23. Proteus (3:46)
24. Dominion (7:04)
25. Lower The Partition (3:38)
26. Get Off My Bridge (4:26)
27. Family Reunion (3:18)
28. Impossible (1:37)
29. Frontier Day (2:43)
30. Hail The Fleet (4:03)
31. You Have The Conn (3:44)
32. Make It So (6:02)
33. This Ends Tonight (3:07)
34. Battle on the Bridge (2:58)
35. All That’s Left (2:02)
36. Annihilate (3:05)
37. Trust Me (2:06)
38. The Last Generation (2:51)
39. Where It All Began (2:19)
40. The Missing Part Of Me (4:30)
41. Must Come To An End (1:32)
42. A New Day (3:22)
43. Legacy and Future (1:44)
44. Names Mean Everything (1:43)
45. The Stars – End Credits (2:59)

Released by: Lakeshore Records
Release date: April 20, 2023
Total running time: 2:30:15

Avenue 5 – music by Adem Ilhan

As a fan, I could complain about how Avenue 5 was treated, but the truth is, it was a very quirky show filling a niche that wasn’t exactly huge. It made it all the way to production and distribution because creator Armando Iannuzzi had a sweetheart deal giving HBO the first crack at anything he created, and he created a caustic comedy about a space cruise ship gone astray. That it was a sci-fi comedy on a pay-cable-channel-morphing-into-a-streaming-service already put Avenue 5 at a disadvantage in terms of eyeballs; that it landed right at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic should’ve given it a chance to be sampled by more people… except that the same pandemic inevitably delayed production of a second season, making it easy to think the show was dead when it wasn’t. (When the second season did arrive, the lackadaisical promotional push for it pretty much confirmed that HBO, at least, had already decided the show was dead, and an official cancellation followed shortly thereafter.) It was impossible timing for a show that wanted to stick around, though one of its episodes – one in which the passengers, led by a particularly clueless rumormonger, ceases to even believe that the show is in space and starts demanding to walk out the airlocks – was one of the best-timed episodes in the history of television. Though written and shot nearly a year before COVID, and probably intended to target climate science denialists, it perfectly encapsulated everything about that early stage of the pandemic when disinformation was starting its alarming spread through the internet.

And the show’s music, seldom foregrounded, just seemed weird – intentionally dissonant, almost like it was sticking its tongue out at the kind of grand orchestrations that usually accompany lovingly detailed shots of massive spaceships on TV. It was far enough down in the show’s sound mix that it was hard to gauge sometimes, but I found it intriguing enough that I was delighted – and, to be honest, very surprised – to see a soundtrack release. And it surprised me even more when it actually stood up as a listening experience without the rest of the show. That’s not always the case with a sitcom. (Then again, there’s actually an album of all of those bass licks from Seinfeld, so what do I know?) Sitcom music tends to be transitional – it gets over a time jump in the story, but seldom serves a dramatic purpose, and isn’t necessarily memorable.

The music for Avenue 5 is different, because Iannuzzi specializes in biting satire. Better known for In The Thick Of It (the series that put Peter Capaldi on the radar as its foulmouthed breakout star) and Veep (an American take on In The Thick Of It, starring Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, produced for HBO), Iannuzzi sets up terrible situations, often full of terrible or incompetent people, winds them up, and lets them go. It’s baked into the cake of Avenue 5 that each episode will land on a schadenfreude-laden callback to every problem that everyone’s been warned about earlier in the show, and that’s usually where Ilhan made his musical presence known.

There are some tracks, such as “The Continuing Journey” and “Your Ears Are Beautiful, To Me”, which are just gorgeous – this is what you’re supposed to hear in a show where an enormous, luxurious spaceship lumbers past the camera! – but the “house style” for Avenue 5’s music seems to be more of a trippy flavor of sound collage. Incomplete vocal samples, chugging cellos and bassoons and bass clarinets that never quite seem to be perfectly in tune (very much like the characters aboard the aforementioned luxurious spaceship), and rapid-fire rhythms that remind me of some of Kronos Quartet’s more offbeat experiments. (I actually found myself thinking of Kronos Quartet a lot on the first listen; this is a compliment.) Some tracks start out as traditional pieces of dramatic scoring before oddball elements creep in and things get weird, such as “It’s All Gonna Be Fine” and “Orbiting”. Some tracks, like “Mmm Ba Deep” and “Newton’s… Third Law”, start weird and stay weird, in some cases pouring on additional weird. It all fits the show perfectly, but the surprising thing is how well it stands up as music. It helps if you’re an Avenue 5 fan going in, but it’s a fascinating set of musical experiments designed to tell the listener “something’s going wrong here, and it’s about to start going even wronger.”

As a soundtrack, Avenue 5 is as quirky, unconventional, and weird as the show this music accompanied – and that’s kind of a beautiful thing. It makes for a surprisingly effective standalone listen.

1. The Continuing Journey (01:45)
2. Mmm Ba Deep (02:19)
3. Go Up There And Smile (00:54)
4. Newton’s… Third Law (01:04)
5. The Key Word Is Walk (01:59)
6. Your Ears Are Beautiful, To Me (01:55)
7. Inside (01:31)
8. Bearing (02:27)
9. It Stands For Visual Effects (01:03)
10. Aaargh (01:20)
11. Back On Earth (01:58)
12. Big Yellow (01:17)
13. It’s All Gonna Be Fine (01:10)
14. Tense Is My Middle Name (01:36)
15. I Don’t Want To Use My Sweet Moves (03:12)
16. Oh Oh Oh Five (01:35)
17. Walk With Me (02:37)
18. Unclench Me (02:19)
19. Knotted Bedsheets (01:58)
20. Orbiting (03:39)
21. Like Psychosis But With None Of The Benefits (01:16)

Released by: Lakeshore Records
Release date: November 3, 2022
Total running time: 38:36

Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, Volume 2 – music by Alan Silvestri

Continuing the four-volume set of music from the updated Cosmos series, Volume Two gives a very strong impression that all four volumes should be heard together. The main theme from Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey doesn’t appear on the second volume, which instead kicks things off with “S.O.T.I.”, the theme for the show’s Ship of the Imagination, which starts out playfully before embarking on a more adventurous theme. Some tracks, such as “Interspecies Partnership” and “Living In An Ice Age”, almost sound like horror film material, as the music continues to do some heavy lifting in conveying the drama behind what would otherwise be somewhat dry scientific descriptions. There are some lovely lyrical pieces as well, including “Natural Selection”, “Family Tree”, and “You And Me And Your Dog”.

There are hints of the show’s main theme in “Titan”, but the real heart of this second volume is a recurring, percolating theme first heard in “The Eye”. Though that piece eventually simmers down into something almost resembling Paddy Kingsland’s music from The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, that rapid-fire theme reasserts itself forcefully in “Tardigrades” a few tracks later. It almost evokes clockwork with its precision – it’s kind of mesmerizing, and it’s really this volume’s “recurring theme”. Of the many themes that recur throughout the series’ music, this really emerges near the top for me.

There are three pieces presented on CD that weren’t included in the original digital release: “Interstellar Clouds”, another theme played out with clockwork precision and hints of the main theme from the series, the big-screen drama of “The Hardships Of Space”, and an alternate take on “S.O.T.I.” (with a slightly different middle section) to bring things full circle.

As much as one might expect the music for a science documentary to end up with well-intentioned synthesizer acrobatics (I still love you, Space Age), one of the best things about all of the music from Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey is that… it simply wasn’t that. Especially with Seth MacFarlane and his love of real live music on board, the budget and the resources were allocated to getting a full orchestra to play this stuff on the epic scale warranted by, well, the story of all life everywhere. The resulting lush music – and, one hopes, an increase in scientific literacy – are the real lasting gifts of this series.

1. S.O.T.I. (1:29)
2. You And Me And Your Dog (2:27)
3. Interspecies Partnership (2:23)
4. Artificial Selection (3:09)
5. Living In An Ice Age (1:08)
6. Genetic Alphabet (2:41)
7. Natural Selection (3:05)
8. Family Tree (3:49)
9. The Eye (3:55)
10. Theory Of Evolution (2:52)
11. The Permian Period (5:11)
12. Tardigrades (1:53)
13. Titan (2:57)
14. The Story Of Life (3:08)
15. 4 Billion Years Of Evolution (1:03)
16. Interstellar Clouds (3:17)
17. The Hardships Of Space (1:39)
18. S.O.T.I. – Alternate (1:29)

Released by: Intrada
Release date: September 11, 2017
Total running time: 48:20

The British Stereo Collective – Mystery Fields

Fair warning: this review may contain more offhand references to now-undeservedly-obscure British cult fantasy & sci-fi shows than the usual stuff I write. You have been warned.

Soundtracks for things that don’t actually exist to need a soundtrack are increasingly a favorite sub-genre of mine. What you’re getting is that particular musician or composer’s unfiltered ideas, freed from the time constraints of having to match something that actually exists in visual form. (And by the same token, such a release is also an instant demo “calling card” for the artist in question.) But Phil Heeks, the mad genius behind the British Stereo Collective moniker, does observe many time constraints on this release, because he’s emulating such past classics as BBC Radiophonic Music, which was itself kind of a publicly-released calling card for the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, showing off the vast range of their radio and TV theme tunes, station identification sounders, and jingles. Everything, from the name of this musical entity down, is part of that tribute.

NHK Special: The Explosion Of Comet ISON, Mystery Of The Solar System – music by Yasunori Mitsuda

Sometimes a soundtrack reviewer just tries to keep up with the latest and greatest, and sometimes a soundtrack reviewer hits you betwixt the ears with something that, while not being the latest and greatest, is what they’ve been listening to in their downtime. This is one of those reviews.

Discovered by astronomers in 2012, Comet ISON (named for the series of networked telescopes used to observe it) caused a stir as it sped toward the inner solar system. Some astronomers, both professional and amateur, pondered the possibility that it might be observable by the unaided human eye, and that its brightness might be greater than the moon’s. But in November 2013, its path carried it into close proximity of the sun, whose heat and gravity shredded the comet into fragments so small that they could no longer be detected. Naked eye stargazers might have been disappointed, but all of this was of intense interest to the astronomical community. And in December 2013, Japanese television network NHK forged ahead with an already-planned television special about the comet, even though it had been destroyed.

Tapped to provide the music for this special was renowned video game and anime composer Yasunori Mitsuda, whose music had graced the likes of Chrono Trigger, Mario Party, Xenogears, Shadow Hearts, Xenoblade Chronicles, and many more. Mitsuda created a soundtrack befitting an epic movie, not a slightly dry but nicely-presented prime-time science special. Everything about this score is the very definition of “extra”. Did the show’s opening title theme need to feature a soaring, wordless female vocal that seemed to be something like the lost sister of the original Star Trek theme? Probably not. But that’s what it got, orchestral and near-operatic grandeur. The second track after that epic opening does some masterful mood-setting. “Distant Universe” creates a feeling of wistful wanderlust; “Human Evolution” is a track of quite, majestic mystery. This is for a science special? This music is making me feel things.

It’s not all orchestral splendor. There are some tracks of percolating synth music (“Comet Tour Of Dreams”, “Understanding The ISON Comet”, “Mission – Challenges”, most of the “Analysis” tracks) that are probably more like what one would expect a prime-time science educational special to sound like. But the sad fact is: Mitsuda composed and recorded everything prior to the special, which was scheduled to go out live so audiences could see Comet ISON’s brightest, closest approach to the sun and the inner planets in, more or less, real time. But that closest approach led to the comet’s destruction, leaving nothing to broadcast live except for a really elaborate obituary for a celestial body. Not all of the music was used in the special, because it no longer fit the subject matter. There’s absolutely sumptuous music here, recorded in advance, for an event that never happened. (One suspects that the bold, triumphant heraldry of “Amazing Huge Comet” is one of the unused cues.)

And it’s absolutely some of the best work Yasunori Mitsuda’s ever done. No joke, this blows away nearly all of what I’ve heard of his video game music. He was given real players and a real budget, an unrestrictive briefing on the subject matter, and was set loose to do what he wanted. This lovely soundtrack is the result, even more than the show it was meant to accompany could hope to be under the circumstances, and it’s definitely worth a listen.

1. Large Comet ISON (2:23)
2. 50 Million Year Journey (3:39)
3. Thoughts Toward A Starry Sky (1:48)
4. Comet Tour Of Dreams (2:21)
5. Distant Universe (2:09)
6. Human Evolution (2:41)
7. Mystery Of The Unknown (2:07)
8. Understanding The ISON Comet (2:05)
9. Analysis, Part 1: Science (2:12)
10. Analysis, Part 2: Puzzle (1:59)
11. Analysis, Part 3: The Past (2:02)
12. Analysis, Part 4: Clarification (2:40)
13. Analysis, Part 5: Analysis (1:54)
14. Mission – Challenges (2:33)
15. Amazing Huge Comet (2:37)
16. Yearning Toward The Skies (2:39)
17. Large Comet ISON: Piano Version (2:17)

Released by: Sleigh Bells Records
Release date: April 27, 2014
Total running time: 40:06

Doctor Who: The Power Of The Doctor – music by Segun Akinola

If there’s anything that draws wayward eyeballs back to Doctor Who, fans who have perhaps given up following the show’s every new adventure, it’s a regeneration episode. Right up there with round-number anniversary specials and holiday specials, they’re sure to reel in even the casually curious. And if you have a regeneration episode that coincides with either a round-number anniversary or a holiday special? That probably means even more curious viewers sampling the Doctor’s adventures than usual.

The Power Of The Doctor was already known to be the episode in which Jodie Whittaker, the first woman to play the Doctor on a regular, ongoing basis, would be bowing out, and it also coincided with the BBC’s centenary celebratory programming – as if it was a tacit admission that, no matter how aghast certain high-ranking members of BBC management past or present might view it, Doctor Who is one of the BBC’s more enduring contributions to popular entertainment and television over a century of broadcasting. (Spoiler: Doctor Who is, in fact, one of the BBC’s more enduring contributions to popular entertainment and television over a century of broadcasting.) This special automatically ticked two of the boxes right there.

Röyksopp – Profound Mysteries III

Now that 2022 has reached its end, I can confidently look back and say that, despite being released really late in the year, and even though it was a year that saw new releases from the likes of Alan Parsons, Midnight Oil, Tim Finn, Tears For Fears, Soft Cell, and a new single from the Queen vaults, the thing I listened to and fixated on the most in 2022 was the third volume of Röyksopp’s Profound Mysteries trilogy. And yes, this has gotten more listen time than the first two entries in the trilogy. This is just peak Röyksopp.

Rewinding a bit, one might remember that in 2014, this was a duo that said it was giving in to the market reality that albums were no longer a thing in the age of music streaming and downloads, and that albums belonged to the age of the CD and the vinyl LP. And when seemingly random Röyksopp singles like “Something In My Heart” and “Never Ever” compelled more repeat listening than some bands’ entire albums, even an old-school album fan like myself had to confess that maybe they had a point, and I’d prefer sporadic singles to them simply going silent. But Profound Mysteries III is proof that a Röyksopp album is always going to be better than a Röyksopp single, because, hey, more Röyksopp. But where the first two Profound Mysteries releases were a bit hit-or-miss from song to song, the third one is their best release since The Inevitable End.

Where this album has its advantage is in the all-star roster of guest collaborators, some we’ve heard from before (Jamie Irrepressible co-writing the atmospheric instrumental “So Ambiguous” and “The Next Day”, and Susanne Sundfør’s vocal elevating “Stay Awhile” to one of the album’s best tracks), some new voices (Gunhild Ramsay Kovacs’s breathy vocals on the upbeat-yet-wistful “Me&Youphoria”), and people that it’s hard to believe hadn’t already collaborated with them (Alison Goldfrapp on “The Night”). Röyksopp really seems to be best-suited to women doing the guest vocals, and just about every song with that element is a standout; surprisingly, as much of a slam-dunk as one would expect it to be, the Alison Goldfrapp collaboration makes the least impact of the bunch. “Me&Youphoria”, “Stay Awhile”, and “Lights Out” are the album’s highlights, with “Just Wanted To Know” featuring Astrid S and a slinky slow groove not far behind. “Feel It” featuring Maurissa Rose is no slouch either; I suppose I should just give in to the obvious and say there’s not a dud track on this album. Some just command more attention than others.

If you’re looking for something that leans into Röyksopp’s history of doing straight-up electro that isn’t quite so downtempo, the ten-minute epic “Speed King” is there for you. Jamie Irrepressible brings a bit of a somber tone to “The Next Day”, and the whole thing wraps up with “Like An Old Dog”, again featuring Pixx, a curious but compelling mix of moody electronics and a wide-screen orchestral backing, an element it shares with “So Ambiguous”, which means that you can shamelessly and almost seamlessly hit repeat on the whole thing.

If Susanne Sundfør’s “Tell Him” had been held over from Profound Mysteries II and added to this album, it’d probably be a strong contender for the best album that this decade will produce, and Röyksopp’s best album ever. But even without it, it’s easily the best thing I listened to in 2022. It’s that good. More like this, please, Röyksopp & friends.

1. So Ambiguous featuring Jamie Irrepressible (6:06)
2. Me&Youphoria featuring Gunhild Ramsay Kovacs (4:41)
3. Stay Awhile featuring Susanne Sundfør (6:11)
4. The Night featuring Alison Goldfrapp (7:38)
5. Lights Out featuring Pixx (5:27)
6. Speed King (9:53)
7. The Next Day featuring Jamie Irrepressible (4:16)
8. Just Wanted To Know featuring Astrid S (4:13)
9. Feel It featuring Maurissa Rose (8:14)
10. Like An Old Dog featuring Pixx (3:55)

Released by: Dog Triumph Records
Release date: November 18, 2022
Total running time: 60:34

An Adventure In Space And Time – music by Edmund Butt

According to the liner notes, composer Edmund Butt was given one major instruction before embarking on the score for the 2013 one-off docudrama An Adventure In Space And Time: don’t let this piece about Doctor Who’s original star sound anything like Doctor Who. Oh, that simple, right?

Except that Doctor Who has run the gamut from electronic music to small chamber ensemble to electronic again and now orchestral-with-electronic. Anyone trying to avoid a category as broad as those will probably take off screaming for the hills. What the score for An Adventure In Space And Time does manage to do is land its musical style somewhere in an old-fashioned kind of timelessness, while occasionally trying on the more typical musical sci-fi trappings when the story calls for it. Starting things out with a waltz is not something that’s in the Doctor Who scoring playbook, providing the first signal that this isn’t “in universe”. (It’s also not entirely reality, but in a bit of a simplified uncanny valley in between the two, just enough to get some of the broad strokes of William Hartnell’s life across.)

You’re not too far into the album before the score does drop something that could easily fit into Doctor Who proper. “The Daleks” may accompany the first appearance of the Dalek props at the BBC, but it would work just as well in-universe, with a staccato synth bassline eerily hinting at the heartbeat-like signature sound associated with Dalek technology. Whether that was intentional or not, it’s a nice, subtle reference. (It’s also somewhat present in “JFK Assassinated”, a scene that appears adjacent to the Daleks’ first appearance in the movie; see notes below about the sequencing of the album.) The playful beginning of “What Dimension?” suddenly hangs a sharp left turn into a startlingly mysterious, almost foreboding passage accompanying the first glimpse of the TARDIS set transitioning from idea to a real place (existing on a soundstage), a theme also heard on its own in the track “The Tardis”.

But the heart of An Adventure In Space And Time, whether it’s the movie or just its score, is in sketching out a somewhat idealized version of Hartnell’s life. “Autograph Hunting” accompanies a montage of such scenes very effectively, just as “Piss & Vinegar” follows Verity Lambert and Sydney Newman’s thread through the story. Though there are some standouts that musically portend major developments in the mythology of Doctor Who, most of the score is concerned with the stories of the people making that mythology.

The one thing I really count any points off for with this otherwise wonderful release is that the tracks are wildly out of order with regard to how and where they appear in the show itself – the first piece of music heard in the show is literally the last track on the album. Only toward the end of the album do things start to appear in anything reasonably resembling their sequence as aired, with a loose suite of cues clustered around the theme of Hartnell’s decline and eventual departure from the role (“I’m So Sorry, Bill”, “My Successor”); the real stunner of this almost-a-suite at the end is “The New Doctor”, which includes the scene of Hartnell shooting his last scene, and the in-universe-or-maybe-not glimpse of Matt Smith that follows. I can’t fault any of the music, but the sequencing is a bit baffling.

1. Main Title – An Adventure in Space and Time (00:36)
2. The Right Man (01:15)
3. The First Woman Producer (01:18)
4. I’ve Got an Idea… (01:32)
5. The Daleks (02:49)
6. Kill Dr. Who (01:49)
7. What Dimension? (01:23)
8. This is My Show (01:49)
9. Autograph Hunting (02:28)
10. Sydney Newman (01:02)
11. Scarlett O’Hara (01:02)
12. Piss & Vinegar (01:23)
13. Dressing Room (01:19)
14. JFK Assassinated (01:48)
15. The TARDIS (00:51)
16. Goodbye Susan (02:29)
17. 10 Million Viewers (00:56)
18. The Fans (00:36)
19. I’m So Sorry, Bill (02:39)
20. Kiss Goodbye (01:05)
21. My Successor (01:06)
22. ISOP Galaxy (00:50)
23. Irreplaceable (01:20)
24. The New Doctor (03:54)
25. Time’s Up… (01:16)

Released by: Silva Screen Records
Release date: March 3, 2014
Total running time: 38:23

Ambition – music by Atanas Valkov

How much musical accompaniment does a single space mission need? When it’s as enjoyable as this album, as much as it likes.

There’s already a full-length album of music by the late, great Vangelis – some of it composed prior to launch for ESA to use as part of its public outreach, and some of it composed after the mission was complete – and of course, since that was Vangelis (who also composed entire albums of music for NASA’s Juno and 2001 Mars Odyssey missions), it was lovely. But ESA also commissioned a short film as part of its public outreach, and rather than a dry, documentary-style piece, we got something a bit more fantastic, which spoke to ESA’s determination to contribute a first to the annals of space exploration and science. Set in an unspecified future in which space exploration is a part of history and yet magic is real (through technological means, it’s hinted), Ambition runs six minutes and change, and is a compact marvel of a decent script, nice visual effects, and two actors (both of them Game Of Thrones cast members who are in their fantasy element here) who aren’t overpowered by either – oh, and Valkov’s atmospheric score, as well. It’s precisely the kind of arty, offbeat piece of public outreach that you’d never get out of NASA these days. But the music score accounts for less than four minutes of the short’s run time, so Valkov had to rework some of his material to fill out the album, hence the extremely specific subtitle Original Soundtrack From and Inspired By The Ambition Film and the Rosetta Mission.

That reworking includes soundbytes from Rosetta’s 2004 launch and other press conferences, woven into extended versions – in some cases, they almost qualify as extended dance mixes – of the score cues from Ambition. The best tracks, however, really just seem like moody, could-be-a-film-score-in-their-own-right pieces of world music with some flourishes of orchestral grandeur. The six-minute piece “Outer Space (Suite for Vibraphone & Contrabass)” has a feel that’s unique on the entire album. Also unique is “Stubborn”, which picks up and develops a story theme from Ambition and builds a nice, somewhat dark, pop song around it. All of this nicely complements the three tracks of music from Ambition itself (which are grouped at the end of the album), managing to feel like it’s all of a piece. It’s a very relaxing, mesmerizing listen, and you don’t have to be intimately acquainted with the subject matter or the film to “get” it. (But hey, the film is embedded below anyway, because it’s neat.)

It’s worth noting that this album exists in two versions: a more recent reissue (an odd thing when both versions of the album are only available digitally) deletes the “Gravitational Slingshot (MarsShake)” track for reasons unknown, and presents the remaining 14 tracks in a different order. The track listing here, as well as the links to purchase the album in theLogBook.com Store, reflects the original 15-track version of the album.

1. Next Generation of Space Exploration (Rosetta Launch)​ featuring Prof. David Southwood & Alexander Gerst (03:56)
2. People’s World (Extended) featuring Marta Zalewska (01:56)
3. Probe (Philae Spacecraft) (01:50)
4. Outer Space (Suite for Vibraphone and Contrabass) (06:16)
5. Key to Life on Earth (Water Extended) (02:31)
6. People’s World (A Singing Comet) featuring Manuel Senfft and Marta Zalewska (01:42)
7. Gravitational Slingshot (MarsShake) (01:48)
8. Agilkia ​(The Landing Site)​ featuring ESA Operations (02:50)
9. Adrift (Cluster II Satellites) (01:40)
10. Stubborn​ featuring MAVIN (03:54)
11. Visitors (Into the Night Sky) featuring Prof. Mark McCaughrean (03:00)
12. Prologue (original soundtrack) (01:21)
13. Rosetta Mission (original soundtrack) (01:09)
14. Water (original soundtrack) (01:16)
15. Let There Be Light (Coda) (03:26)

Released by: IDMusic
Release date: January 15, 2015
Total running time: 38:27

The Lickerish Quartet – Threesome, Vol. 2

The second EP release from the trio (yes, not an actual quartet) of reunited Jellyfish alumni arrived just in time to give 2021 some good music, proof that surely it would be a better year than the one before it. Well, okay, maybe the jury’s still out on that one, but Threesome, Vol. 2 is some good music.

“Do You Feel Better?” and “Sovereignty Blues” offer a one-two power pop punch that serves as a reminder that not only did everyone in the band previously belong to Jellyfish, but they’ve still got the chops – snappy songwriting with great hooks, off-the-scale musicianship, great vocal harmonies, and production with just the right retro touches when needed. The lyrics of “Sovereignty Blues” seem kind of prescient in terms of recommending a leaner diet of news…or, at the very least, stuff passing itself off as news. It was already a catchy song, but I can totally get behind those lyrics, particularly in this decade.

The real attention-getter of this collection is “The Dream That Took Me Over”, which slides into a slightly more recent sound with touches of early ’80s new wave and a great bass groove throughout. It’s a deliciously relistenable treatment of a well-written, nicely-performed song. (It also got a music video of its own – see below – which seems to be a giveaway that the band also knew this was the best thing on this particular release.) Further visits to this kind of early ’80s sound would be welcome – I’m not suggesting that they try to form a new TV Eyes, but Manning’s involvement with that album proves that he’s really good at hitting that sweet spot.

Just like the first volume, there’s one song on here that doesn’t quite land with me, but even so, there’s stuff I like about “Snollygoster Goon”, from its brief flashes of a “Bohemian Rhapsody”-style wall of vocals, but this song doesn’t get replayed as often as the other three. But three out of four isn’t bad – and I’m sure “Snollygoster Goon” is probably somebody else’s favorite somewhere. Lickerish Quartet’s continued short releases are nice little doses of a band that really gets songcraft and doesn’t think it’s been rendered obsolete by software and trendiness. Keep ’em coming.

1. Do You Feel Better? (5:05)
2. Sovereignty Blues (3:50)
3. The Dream That Took Me Over (4:40)
4. Snollygoster Goon (3:16)

Released by: InGrooves / Label Logic
Release date: January 8, 2021
Total running time: 16:48

The Book Of Boba Fett, Volume 1 (Chapters 1-4) – music by Joseph Shirley

Since it’s embraced full-time fanservice, I’m not as sure as I used to be that The Mandalorian was the revolution in Star Wars storytelling that was so urgently needed after the bulk of the sequel trilogy, but I will still give it credit for shaking up the status quo where the music of the Star Wars universe is concerned. That willingness to experiment beyond the John Williams playbook continues with the music from The Book Of Boba Fett, scored by Mandalorian composer Ludwig Goransson‘s longtime collaborator, Joseph Shirley. He’s been Goransson’s programmer since 2015‘s Creed and began racking up “additional music by…” credits alongside his mentor on TBS’ Angie Tribeca series and season two of The Mandalorian. The Book Of Boba Fett really should be his breakout work, because there’s a lot in this score to enjoy. I don’t expect to see him doing much programming work for other people after this.

Goransson still has his fingers on the scale, however: he composed the theme for the series, which is referred to frequently in the score, and he also has intimate knowledge of Goransson’s working style, so there are plenty of ways in which The Book Of Boba Fett and The Mandlorian are musically of a piece (especially since – and surely it’s been long enough that this is no longer legitimately a spoiler – two episodes out of seven are taken up by what even the show’s creators refer to as “The Mandalorian Season 2.5”, where the narrative momentum surrounding Fett himself comes to a grinding halt so we can catch up with the stars of the show from which this series was spun off). The lumbering theme Goransson coined for Fett in the second season of The Mandalorian also makes several appearances here.

One sound that The Book Of Boba Fett can claim all its own is an almost-guttural tribal sound, with low male vocals either supplanting or supplementing traditional orchestration. This is another element taking its lead from Goransson’s main theme, but it lends this show’s scores a very unique flavor. Combined with just the right level of low, threatening brass, as in the track “The Stranger”, this is an amazing sound. It’s not just an unbroken vowel sound, though; the vocals have wordless syllables that do a great deal of the rhythmic work, even if the vocals are not in the foreground of a given piece (such as “Fear Is A Safe Bet”). These elements convey a lot of the emotion as Fett joins the Tusken tribe and takes them on as his found family in the early episodes’ flashbacks. The vocal work reaches peak beauty with a passage toward the end of “Aliit Ori’shya Tal’din” that reaches for an almost religious feel.

The score also has a very modern edge, too; the “Road Rage” and “The Mod Parlour” tracks bring a trip-hop beat to the proceedings. This is particularly fun with “Road Rage”‘s extended chase scene – it’s some of the most fun action music I’ve heard since, honestly, The Matrix trilogy‘s Don Davis/Rob Dougan mash-ups. The orchestra gets its licks in, but the synth elements that almost wander into dubstep territory glue it all together, and it’s the standout action scene here. “The Mod Parlour” is a piece of source music, heard alongside the first appearance of a cybernetic modifier (think of it as the Star Wars universe’s answer to a tattoo artist) played by musician-turned-actor Thundercat, accompanying a montage of his working to save the life of Fennec Shand (Ming-Na Wen) at Fett’s insistence; a well-known bassist, Thundercat actually plays the trippy descending bass riffs on the track itself.

If you’re looking for the music accompanying episode 2’s train heist as Fett and his found Tusken family finally take the fight to the Pykes, it’s a bonus track on the second volume. That may be a frustrating thing to move to a later release, but honestly, a lot of the best music happens before a show that’s nominally about Boba Fett suddenly gets hijacked for a check-in with Mando and Grogu.

If there’s anything I want out of a second season of The Book Of Boba Fett (something which, at this time, has yet to be announced officially), I want an entire season of Temuera Morrison as the show’s intense lead without the jarring “we interrupt this program for an urgent update from the Mandalorian” gear-shift of the first season, and I’m definitely ready to hear Joseph Shirley doing the music again.

1. Rebirth (03:17)
2. The Stranger (03:01)
3. Normal Day at the Office (02:42)
4. Fear Is a Sure Bet (03:48)
5. Desert Walk (03:01)
6. Boba’s Throne (03:45)
7. The Twins (04:37)
8. Stop That Train (04:06)
9. Like a Bantha (02:03)
10. The Ultimate Boon (05:08)
11. Aliit Ori’shya Tal’din (06:12)
12. Road Rage (04:57)
13. The Mod Parlour (featuring Thundercat) (03:04)
14. Fennec and Boba (02:09)
15. You Fly, I’ll Shoot (05:34)
16. The Families of Mos Espa (05:34)
17. The Book of Boba Fett (02:56)

Released by: Disney Music
Release date: January 21, 2022
Total running time: 1:05:45

Forenzics – Shades and Echoes

As with many things in the early 2020s, this album arrived in a different form than expected. First announced in 2020, just as everyone was hunkering down for lockdown, the then-upcoming Forenzics album was said to be under construction by some key founding members of Split Enz, and would involve making entire new songs out of the catchy transition pieces that were commonly used to connect wildly different sections of early Enz songs. And, starting with the lead track “Walking”, that’s what Shades and Echoes delivers – along with something else. At roughly the same time in 2019-2020, keyboardist Eddie Rayner assembled an ad hoc band of friends to jam out some songs of their own; he asked Tim Finn to help come up with some lyrics for those. By the time Shades and Echoes landed, it has absorbed the “band jam with lyrics added later” project as well, and the result is probably better than either project would have been on its own. The band jams gained Finn as a lyricist and vocalist, and Shades and Echoes was freed from being tied down to rehashing even small nuggets of Split Enz songs.

The Split Enz-derived material is inspired – “Walking” builds upon a very brief interlude from “Walking Down A Road”, but is otherwise a new song with completely new lyrics that only briefly mention their inspiration. “Abandoned” uses the mandolin riff from “Matinee Idyll (129)” as its point of inspiration. “Chances Are” is more tied to its inspiration than most, heavily referencing the echoing guitar riff of “Spellbound”. “Empty Nest” builds on Rayner’s piano outro from “Bon Voyage”, an atypical dip into the ’80s Enz repertoire (most of the “shades and echoes” that serve as starting points for new material here hail from the band’s early ’70s art rock phase). You really have to pay attention to pick out “Strange Stars” getting its inspiration from “Under The Wheel”, or “Autumn” getting a boost by way of “Without A Doubt”, so not all of the Split Enz lifts are obvious.

The other half of the album, however, derived from Rayner’s jams with his group of colleagues dubbed Double Life, give it a whole different flavor, preventing the album from simply being a sonic scavenger hunt for Split Enz fans. “Unlikely Friend”, “Rules”, “Premiere Fois” and “Europe Speaks” are the choice cuts here, the first two in particular distinguishing themselves with vocal duets between Finn and Megan Washington (who also contributed vocals on one of his later solo albums). “Unlikely Friend” is jazzy in a way that one doesn’t necessarily expect to hear from any project that has even a partial Split Enz reunion in its DNA, and it’s the runaway favorite of the whole project.

If this had been something only for listeners who wanted to pick out Split Enz riffs, that might’ve lessened the wide appeal of Shades and Echoes. It was a wise choice to widen the album’s appeal – there are a lot of gems that no one was expecting here, and it makes for compulsory repeat listening. This album is really one of the best things that has hit my ears in 2022.

1. Walking (4:57)
2. Rules (3:58)
3. Abandoned (3:17)
4. Chances Are (3:19)
5. Empty Nest (4:25)
6. Premiere Fois (3:47)
7. Europe Speaks (3:55)
8. Shut The Door (3:14)
9. Love Is (4:20)
10. Unlikely Friend (3:39)
11. Strange Stars (4:34)
12. System Overload (3:58)
13. I Spy (4:00)
14. Autumn (3:45)

Released by: Warner Music NZ
Release date: February 4, 2022
Total running time: 55:08

Buck Rogers In The 25th Century: Season Two

Most music takes quite a while to seep into someone’s head, and it usually takes repeat listening. Music for television didn’t really get much of a chance to do that. Theme songs heard week to week, sure, and in the days when shows were able to reuse music from episode to episode, such as the original Star Trek did (or, to name another whose instantly recognizable themes come to mind, Gilligan’s Island), would ingrain themselves in the memory. And I’m here to report that Bruce Broughton’s music from the second season of Buck Rogers In The 25th Century did the same, at least for young me.

Each episode’s opening credits still unrolled to the tune of Johnny Harris’ brassy arrangement of the Stu Phillips/Glen A. Larson theme tune from season one, but Broughton brought something different to season two; cute synthesized robot music and “something kinda funky” were off the table as the series tried desperately to graduate from its decidedly disco-era first season. Under a new producer who was trying to lend the show a new layer of credibility, Buck Rogers’ second season was somewhat ironically patterned after its cancelled NBC predecessor, Star Trek, with Buck & company exploring deep space rather than staying on Earth. Most episodes opened with a slow tracking shot of the Earth ship Searcher, Buck’s new home base, with a noble, widescreen, and not-at-all-disco-fied theme for the ship and its mission provided by Broughton… and though I had long since lost track of what it was from, when the series resurfaced on DVD, it all came back to me. This four-disc set allows it all to be heard without all of that pesky dialogue and the sound effects mix.

Also in the irony department is the fact that the shorter second season – which ran only half as long as the first season – gets a four-disc soundtrack collection as opposed to season one’s three-disc box set. Chalk that one up to the recognition that, at least musically, the show was trying harder. There would be no goofy scenes of Buck trying to convince anyone to boogie down; the music is painted from a more epic palette for season two’s eleven episodes (two of which were feature-length specials each split into two-parters in syndication), and stands up to more repeat listening than, well, “something kinda funky”. (Not that there’s anything wrong with something kinda funky, it’s just that this wasn’t that show anymore.)

Also getting his own theme from the opening moments of season two is Hawk, the stoic warrior who becomes the show’s #2 star (which led to Erin Gray being somewhat sidelined for the remainder of the show); the music for season opener Time Of The Hawk drives Hawk’s theme through minor and major keys, starting with a threatening sound and ending on a redeemed note as he joins the show as a regular. Broughton continues refining these new themes in The Guardians, which aired later in the season, and gets some marvelously mysterious music into the mix as well, with just a hint of Holst’s “Neptune” creeping into the “Janovus” 27 cue. The second of the movie-length species, Journey To Oasis, opens the second disc, with sweeping but slightly old school music from returning season one composer John Cacavas – not to say that it’s steeped in musical cliche, but it’s pretty much exactly the kind of music you’d expect from a trudge through the desert. It’s interesting that Journey To Oasis also gets its own unique end credit suite – was this an approach being considered for the series going forward? Broughton is back for The Golden Man, iterating his Searcher theme through some moody variations appropriate to its predicament in this episode (being wedged into an asteroid). The music for what’s nominally the episode’s “A” story, involving a wayward father-son alien team where the older of the two is played by a child actor, gets a more interesting musical treatment than it really deserved, but that’s why Broughton quickly graduated from TV scoring to the movies: he didn’t phone in even the most ridiculous assignments.

That comes in handy on the third disc, with Broughton’s scores for The Satyr, a borderline-goofy space western episode, and the hasn’t-aged-well slapstick comedy of Shgoratchx! (whose original title, Derelict Equation, was ejected at the last minute for reasons unknown, according to the liner notes, despite the fact that one can at least conceivably pronounce it). Neither are the show’s finest hour; Bruce Broughton gives them decent scores anyway, and yes, that theme for the Searcher continues to evolve to the point that I now think if someone was really smart, they’d track a Star Trek fan series just with Broughton’s music from this box set, because at this point he’s Buck Rogers’ Fred Steiner. Also on the third disc is Herbert Don Woods’ score for The Crystals, which again brings a slightly more old-school sound compared to the more modern sound of the Broughton scores. There’s nothing wrong with it, but it has a somewhat late ’60s/early ’70s sound to it.

Disc four features the return of Stu Phillips, composer of the Buck Rogers theme and one of season one’s house composers, for The Hand Of Goral, and it’s very much in line with season one’s better dramatic scores, with some real weight and menace to it. Herbert Don Woods’ old-school sound is back for The Dorian Secret (the last episode to air); the album closes out with another Broughton score, Testimony Of A Traitor, which has a heavier, darker sound than most of Broughton’s prior material, and doesn’t allow much development of the Searcher theme since the episode is, atypically for season two, Earth-bound, dealing with Buck’s actions prior to his fateful space flight.

In the end, what makes Broughton’s scores stand out on this set is that he was consciously developing themes that recurred whenever he got a scoring assignment. Naturally, the other composers contracted for different episodes were under no obligation to refer to his material. But Broughton’s work brings this sometimes silliest of sci-fi series the weight and heft of an ongoing saga – the almost-nautical recurring theme Broughton employs makes the show sound, frankly, more important and epic than it ever actually was. It might just be that the music of season two of Buck Rogers was the best thing we got out of the show’s renewal. Well, that and some Crichton one-liners. Sadly, this set is now out of print, with no apparent digital distribution afterlife for the material; an unfortunate fate for music that was better than the show it was meant to accompany.

Disc One

Time Of The Hawk

1. The Massacre (2:40)
2. Main Title (Version 2) (1:14)
3. The Searcher (1:44)
4. So Far Away (2:30)
5. You’re Changing (0:36)
6. Thordis (1:48)
7. Gassed (1:16)
8. War Against the Humans (2:05)
9. Flight to Hawk’s Lair (3:15)
10. Buck Looks for Wilma (2:34)
11. Birdfight (3:22)
12. Crash Landing (1:50)
13. Koori Injured (2:10)
14. The Trek (3:38)
15. We Meet Again (1:56)
16. Let My Spirit Go (6:06)
17. Forget the Past (2:48)
18. Bumper (0:08)

    The Guardians

19. Janovus 26 (1:34)
20. The Prophecy (0:46)
21. The Messenger (2:53)
22. Frozen Mission (1:51)
23. I Wasn’t Dreaming (0:29)
24. Hawk’s Vision (4:08)
25. Vision in the Corridor (1:05)
26. I’m Scared (3:32)
27. Shuttle to Surface (1:47)
28. Janovus 27 (3:41)
29. End Credits (long) (0:51)

Disc Two

Journey To Oasis

1. Main Title (Version 1) (1:14)
2. Head and Body (2:49)
3. Episode Titles (1:05)
4. Wilma and the Ambassador (4:00)
5. Abandon Ship (1:32)
6. This Way, Doctor (2:34)
7. The Doctor Trapped (1:31)
8. You’ll Never Get There (3:43)
9. Romantic Dreams (5:09)
10. Moaning Wind (4:25)
11. Unconscious Thoughts (1:38)
12. Ezarhaaden (4:41)
13. The Spires of Oasis (6:10)
14. Journey to Oasis End Credits (0:54)

    The Golden Man

15. Intercepting Lifepod (1:27)
16. Wedged In (2:29)
17. Caged (2:23)
18. Too Much Weight (3:48)
19. Certain Precautions (1:22)
20. The Bait (1:23)
21. Man in the Cape (4:37)
22. Searcher Freed (5:04)
23. Straight to Bed (0:50)
24. End Credits (0:31)

Disc Three

The Crystals

1. The Mummy (3:54)
2. The Crystals Credits (1:03)
3. Mummy Havoc (3:34)
4. Meeting Laura (1:20)
5. Mummy Hunt (0:48)
6. Mummy Takes Crystals and Laura (3:23)
7. The Mummy Is Your Mommy (4:23)
8. I’m Frightened (1:55)
9. Buck and Mummy Fight (1:54)
10. Goodbye Laura (0:52)

    The Satyr

11. The Satyr Attacks (1:25)
12. New Corinth (3:40)
13. Just the Wind (4:11)
14. He’s Out There (0:47)
15. Moon Wine (2:04)
16. Pangor and Buck Fight (4:27)
17. Buck Transforms (4:17)
18. Woman and Wine (4:06)
19. Buck Recovers (2:02)

    Shgoratchx!

20. The Derelict (1:36)
21. Lifeforms (1:33)
22. Chaos Aboard (3:13)
23. Power Plant Havoc (3:23)
24. Poor Wilma (0:22)
25. Locked In (0:31)
26. Wilma Trapped (2:53)
27. Last and Best Hope (0:59)
28. Twiki’s Solution (4:31)
29. Dog of a Ship (0:24)
30. End Credits (vocal version) (0:31)

Disc Four

The Hand Of Goral

1. Strange Flashing (2:37)
2. Goral City (2:47)
3. Cursed Planet (3:02)
4. Suspicious (3:45)
5. Searcher Calling (1:14)
6. Snare-Beam (0:56)
7. Gone Like the Others (5:18)
8. Wrong Hawk (2:49)
9. Laughter (0:15)

   The Dorian Secret

10. Pursuit & Escape (1:56)
11. Asteria (6:11)
12. Unrest (3:16)
13. Dorian Justice (3:54)
14. Revelation (6:01)
15. Look to the Future (1:08)

    Testimony Of A Traitor

16. High Treason (1:10)
17. Traitors and Mad Men (7:40)
18. My Best Friend (2:12)
19. Clandestine Meeting (1:51)
20. Strategic Air Command (1:03)
21. Escape to Earth (4:11)
22. Mount Rushmore (0:56)
23. President’s Bunker (3:50)
24. A New Course (0:34)
25. End Credits (long vocal version) (0:51)

Released by: Intrada Records
Release date: August 11, 2014
Disc one total running time: 1:04:45
Disc two total running time: 1:05:41
Disc three total running time: 1:10:23
Disc four total running time: 1:09:42

Doctor Who: The Happiness Patrol Remixes – music by Dominic Glynn

Remixing soundtrack recordings is fraught with difficulties and pitfalls. You’re taking something that probably wasn’t originally designed to conform to a certain number of beats-per-minute and you’re now imposing that rhythmic structure onto a piece that may not be best suited to that format. And as often as not, as with, say, the remixes of the themes from The X-Files or Mission: Impossible that accompanied those properties’ emergence as movie franchises, what you end up doing is rebuilding the whole piece from the ground up, resulting in something that is less of a remix and more of a completely new recording (as was the case with FAB’s tribute to The Prisoner). The music from the subversive 1988 Doctor Who three-parter The Happiness Patrol is definitely a tough nut to crack; though largely performed on synthesizers (and a bit of real harmonica), it creates its tension by stretching things out occasionally, and to try to force those occasional pauses or changes in meter to conform to a certain beat would seem to be a bit self-defeating to the atmosphere.

But wait! The advantage this release has is that the remix is done by the original composer for those three episodes, and not someone coming in later with limited experience or appreciation for the original music. Glynn has done prior Doctor Who remix albums (The Gallifrey Remixes, The Ravolox Remixes), and scored episodes of Doctor Who from 1986 through its final 20th century season in 1989, as well as creating the theme music arrangement for the 1986 Trial Of A Time Lord season. Glynn understands the feel; he wrote the music to begin with. The longest track, “Happiness Will Prevail”, begins without the slightest hint that it’s a remix. Layers of added synths deepen the harmonies, and by the time percussion that wasn’t in the original score starts to subtly creep in, nothing feels out of place – everything supports and strengthens the original piece rather than clashing with it. At around the four-and-a-half-minute mark, Glynn slips in dialogue from one of the story’s most powerful scenes (truthfully, one of Sylvester McCoy’s most powerful scenes as the Doctor), and by this time, you’re on board with it. The rhythm starts becoming more pronounced, the added synths more modern, but it all serves to enhance, rather than intrude on, the remaining elements of the original score. And yes, you could conceivably dance to it. I was originally skeptical of the ten-minute run time of this track, but that run time allows Glynn to layer things in without the additions feeling rushed or intrusive.

The shorter tracks introduce new elements over the original recordings from the word go, because surely by now you’re aware this is a remix album. “Brandy Of The Damned” does a good job of picking up the momentum from the first track and running with it; you’re over two minutes into this track before some very busy synths and percussion suddenly drop in. “Kandymania”, as the name implies, builds new layers on top of the off-key calliope theme for the Kandyman, an experiment that perhaps mercifully lasts only two minutes but is still enjoyably moody. “I’m Happy You’re Glad” brings the sinister mood to its conclusion, dropping in its own extra layers of percussion to round out the EP’s total run time which is, generously enough, almost equal to the length of one of The Happiness Patrol‘s three episodes.

It’s all very nicely done, and at no point detracts from the original cues from 1988; if anything, it’s like we already have a score on hand in case the modern Doctor Who ever decides to bring back the Kandyman. Which is something that’s very unlikely to happen, but then I would’ve said the same of anyone’s chances of building a decent remix EP on top of this story’s score. Now I have the urge to hear Survival get the same treatment beyond the tantalizing single track devoted to remixing it on The Ravolox Remixes.

1. Happiness Will Prevail (Remix) (10:39)
2. Brandy Of The Damned (Remix) (4:47)
3. Kandymania (Remix) (2:02)
4. I’m Happy You’re Glad (Remix) (5:11)

Released by: No Bones Records
Release date: September 18, 2017
Total running time: 22:39

Wonder Woman

One of the greatest things to come out of the 2017 big-screen revival of Wonder Woman was the fond remembrance of the previous live-action iteration which, while perhaps cheesy in its own distinctly 1970s way, might just still be my favorite screen iteration of the character. (The fact that Lynda Carter turns up in the 2020 sequel, WW84, would seem to be validation that she has a well-earned permanent foothold in pop culture. She’s also a magnificent Twitter follow.) My attachment to the ’70s Wonder Woman series may be one of cozy nostalgia rather than any kind of referendum on which version is superior, or more “on message” with the character as seen in the comics, and needless to say, this is the long, long overdue soundtrack.

Star Trek: Picard – Season 2

The jury will probably be out for quite a while on whether or not the second season of the Paramount+ series Star Trek: Picard was a creative success; the response to the show has definitely been in a love-it-or-hate-it mode, with very few critics choosing to stay in the middle ground. The return of Q, the time travel plotline, the on-the-nose “fascist future Earth” and the equally on-the-nose warnings that this, rather than Star Trek’s more inclusive future, could be where we’re headed if 21st century society is any indication… if there’s something that the second season of Picard may not have been in many places, it’s, in a word, subtle. (Of course, the argument could also be made that, after the past few years of real-life plot developments

The soundtrack opens with a more active, strident reading of the show’s established theme tune, before transitioning to a pair of wonderful orchestral tours-de-force, “Look Up” and “Let’s See What’s Out There”. The musical tone gets darker as the timeline takes a sudden shift, and here we run into one of my first complaints about this soundtrack. One of the highlights of the early part of the season was the revisiting of the sinister Borg theme from Star Trek: First Contact, here appearing in the show as the musical signature for the Borg Queen. And…those great new takes on that theme are nowhere to be found here. (It’s almost quoted – but not quite – in “Build Back Better Borg” later on in the album.)

The darker, more contemplative vibe continues, with some highlights including “Family Secrets”, “A Taste Of Freedom”, and “The Journey Inward”. Somewhere around “Build Back Better Borg”, the emphasis returns to action. The absence of the Borg theme becomes really baffling here, because the theme from Star Trek: First Contact itself is quoted in “Second Chances”, and Goldsmith’s theme from Star Trek: The Motion Picture (which Russo has decided is Picard’s theme) is quoted in “Guardian At The Gate”.

The end of the album is rounded out with music from the Europa Mission shindig, including the band’s instrumental cover of “Fly Me To The Moon”, and yes, from Benatar to the Borg-Queen-to-be, “Shadows Of The Night” sung (surprisingly well) by Alison Pill. Two different takes on the end credits music close things out.

It’s already known that Russo is handing the composing duties off to Stephen Barton and Freddie Wiedman for season three, which will apparently be heavy on quotations of The Motion Picture theme (and Blaster Beam!), so this is his last hurrah for Star Trek: Picard. What I liked about this season’s music – as heard in the show – was that Russo did a magnificent job weaving legacy themes into his own work, musically putting this season in the greater context of Star Trek mythology as a whole. My singular beef with the album is that, for whatever reason (including the less generous running time as compared to the season one soundtrack album), as a pure listening experience, it doesn’t reflect the amazing job its obviously talented composer did with that.

1. Season 2 Main Title (1:59)
2. Look Up (1:21)
3. Let’s See What’s Out There (3:54)
4. The Pressure of Legacy (1:12)
5. Penance (3:03)
6. Seek The Watcher (5:06)
7. Best Laid Plans (4:49)
8. What’s My Full Name? (2:44)
9. Disappointment In Leadership (4:24)
10. Family Secrets (2:05)
11. Your Ancestor (1:07)
12. A Melancholy (2:29)
13. A Taste of Freedom (3:54)
14. Maximum Security Function (1:20)
15. Lies Upon Lies (2:22)
16. The Journey Inward (3:12)
17. The True Monster (3:05)
18. My Spaceship (1:30)
19. Deepest Truth (2:32)
20. My Truth (2:55)
21. Build Back Better Borg (4:53)
22. Opening the Door (4:06)
23. Honoring the Deal (3:41)
24. The Travelers (1:36)
25. Where You Belong (3:03)
26. Guardian at The Gate (3:43)
27. Second Chances (3:13)
28. Fly Me To The Moon (1:42)
29. Shadows of the Night (featuring Alison Pill) (1:28)
30. Season 2 End Credits (201) (0:54)
31. Season 2 End Credits (209) (0:53)

Released by: Lakeshore Records
Release date: April 29, 2022
Total running time: 84:15

Star Trek Collection: The Final Frontier

I hit peak Star Trek superfandom in the late ’80s, just in time for the 1990s and the sudden rapid expansion of Star Trek as a genuine media franchise to kick in. There were so many shows on TV. A good few episodes of these various series had really good music. And the music…was nowhere to be found commercially. Star Trek: The Next Generation wound up with four individual CD releases through the end of the 1990s, while Deep Space Nine and Voyager merited one each, in each instance with (most of) the score from their pilot episodes. That pattern continued with the pilot episode of Enterprise in 2001, and then…it all went silent. Being in my early 20s, I didn’t get it. It seemed like GNP Crescendo had a license to print money – or at least a license to get their hands of copious amounts of my money – if only they’d keep releasing more Star Trek music. (I know nothing of musicians’ unions and re-use fees at the time, I just knew what I liked.) My attention drifted to other franchises that seemed to know full well that their fans wanted more music, not less – Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica, the new Doctor Who… and then a magical thing happened in the late aughts. Suddenly Paramount seemed more open to the idea of mining its musical vaults. Long-out-of-print Star Trek movie soundtrack albums suddenly had newly expanded editions. On the television front, things went from famine to feast as massive box sets chronicled either the entire musical oeveure of the 1960s series, or the entire body of work of a beloved single Next Generation composer. And then all of the television series racked up not just one, but two 3-or-4-disc box sets covering music from their entire broadcast run.

Bob Stanley presents ’76 In The Shade

What with the pandemic and all, the 2020s, as decades go, have been one hell of a long century. One of the things I’ve sought refuge in has been music. Soundtracks, of course, but also rolling back the clock and reacquainting myself with old favorites like Parliament (of which more later), and somehow, an Amazon search brought me to this compilation, curated by Bob Stanley of Saint Etienne. It’s not the only such compilation that’s been assembled by one or more members of Saint Etienne, but if they’re all as good as this one, that’s a collection I need to expand upon, because ’76 In The Shade is nothing short of amazing.

As the well-written liner notes point out, Stanley is trying to recreate what was being heard in England’s sweltering summer of 1976. But that doesn’t mean just what was on the radio. It means what random instrumentals were being played under the BBC’s pre-sign-on TV test cards in the morning. It means what pieces of production music were heard under other things, be they commercials or radio interstitials. And then, yes, there’s also what was on the radio, but even here, Stanley reaches deep into the playlists he remembers and rescues some true gems from undeserved obscurity, so while there are a few well-worn radio staples here – 10cc’s “I’m Mandy, Fly Me”, Jefferson Starship’s “Miracles”, Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds’ “Fallin In’ Love” – there is much here that has either been forgotten, or just seemed new to my ears on this side of the Atlantic.

The most obvious quality of all of it, aside from being really good music, is that it’s so mellow. This compilation is so laid-back that the hardest-rocking thing to be found is a Cliff Richard song (!), but even that selection is so sweetened by its production that it fits alongside the rest of the album without seeming jarring.

Some of the real gems are the instrumental tracks, many of them from production music library LPs that would’ve been in circulation at radio and television stations at the time. On the non-instrumental side, there are gems like the Motown-style “You’re The Song (That I Can’t Stop singing)”, credited to Hollywood Freeway although it was basically the songwriter’s demo of his new song. It was later covered by Frankie Valli, though I find myself preferring what turns out to be the original version of the song with its lush instrumentation and falsetto vocals. Other tracks by Liverpool Express, Sylvia, and Blue Mink make it seem like their producers had only just discovered reverb and were determined to drench these entire songs in reverb. It’s not unpleasant, but boy, are the results sometimes a bit on the trippy side.

Some of the songs here I remember from my childhood, and the rest I’m delighted to make their acquaintance here. Various artist collections are sometimes a bit of a crap shoot, engaged in a tug-of-war between what the issuing label can afford to license from other labels, or for that matter what’s even available at the time the compilation is assembled. But ’76 In The Shade is remarkably well-curated, and since I discovered it in 2021, it has gotten a lot of repeat listening time over these past couple of sweltering 21st century summers. It’s a nicely selected, relaxing album that, even though it contains only a handful of songs I recognized from my childhood, managed to take me back to that time.

1. Walking So Free – Spike Janson (3:33)
2. Sugar Shuffle – Lynsey De Paul (4:00)
3. Miracles (Single Version) – Jefferson Starship (3:29)
4. Get Out Of Town – Smokey Robinson (4:49)
5. I’m Mandy, Fly Me (Album Version) – 10cc (5:20)
6. Stoned Out – Simon Park (2:17)
7. Nothing To Remind Me – Cliff Richard (2:59)
8. Discover Me – David Ruffin (4:12)
9. You’re The Song (That I Can’t Stop Singing) – Hollywood Freeway (3:10)
10. You Are My Love – Liverpool Express (3:15)
11. Liquid Sunshine – John Cameron (3:00)
12. Not On The Outside – Sylvia (3:03)
13. Stay With Me – Blue Mink (3:17)
14. Wild Mountain Honey – Steve Miller Band (4:50)
15. Fallin’ In Love – Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds (3:12)
16. Flowers – The Emotions (4:28)
17. Montreal City – Azimuth (3:18)
18. Rock ‘n’ Roll Star – Barclay James Harvest (5:18)
19. Miss My Love Today – Gilbert O’Sullivan (3:46)
20. Music – Carmen McRae (3:29)

Released by: Ace Records
Release date: August 11, 2020
Total running time: 74:45

Raymond Scott – The Jingle Workshop

If popular music fades out of fashion quickly, then what about the seemingly disposable music in the background of the commercials that play between popular songs on the radio? This unusual 2-CD set contains two shiny round things capable of transporting you back in time – a time that, it must be said, is barely recognizable from a 21st century vantage point. A time when commercials had to very carefully point out that new RCA color televisions were compatible with the existing black and white transmissions of TV stations. A time when brands of beer and bread did battle over the airwaves to see who could hire someone to make the catchiest, jazziest jingles. A time when Sprite was such a new thing that it required a jingle to explain what it was (and that it might be used for mixed drinks), and yet other jingles implored consumers to buy soft drinks bottled in glass bottles. And on the downside, a time when the airwaves were also choked with commercials for tobacco products.

“Someone who could make the catchiest, jazziest jingles” fortunately could simply be pronounced “Raymond Scott”, which is why the renowned bandleader amassed enough of this kind of work to merit a two-disc set. Scott was a double threat – he could bring the light jazzy sound that was in demand in the day, and then when the airwaves were so full of such commercials that entire commercial breaks started to run together in a blur, his electronic tinkering, mad-genius side came into play, putting some of the first radiophonic music into the ears of a mass audience in the United States. The Jingle Workshop‘s tracks end up being about 75% jazzy and 25% electronic, and it’s probably because the producers of this compilation didn’t want to have too much overlap with previous compilations like Manhattan Research Inc. and Three Willow Park, which were both devoted entirely to Scott’s early analog electronic music.

Some pieces – such as the “Vibes & Marimba” piece for an unknown sponsor, or the “The Tingling Tartness Of Sprite” instrumental – feature traditional instruments run through so much reverb that they land in an uncanny valley between the purely acoustic and the electronic sound that Scott was beginning to formulate in his head. The early Sprite jingle “Melonball Bounce” makes a repeat appearance here (it was also featured on Manhattan Research Inc.), representing Scott’s fully-electronic compositions.

There are some moments of unexpected sheer beauty peppered among these tracks; instrumental performances for products like Scott Family Napkins and Mastland Carpet are magnificently orchestrated and performed, as much as a testament to the players Scott hired as to his skill in composing the pieces. Scott’s wife, Dorothy Collins, features as the female vocal on most of the tracks (and busts up laughing in the rehearsal for a jingle for Esso gas stations). Whoever sequenced the album has a pretty good sense of humor too – see the one-two punch of tracks that close out the first disc: “Let’s Have a Sackful of Krystals” (for a fast-food burger chain) followed by “Ex-Lax Helps You”. If there’s one major surprise in this collection, it’s that Collins is not the only vocalist – Mel Tormé features on a couple of tracks.

A collection of radio spots and jingles from a bygone era won’t appeal to everyone, and admittedly, even though I’m a big fan of Raymond Scott’s work, I have to be in a certain frame of mind to sit and listen to it all in one sitting. The instrumental cuts are the only thing preventing The Jingle Workshop from being an 80-minute commercial break, often for extinct brands, and that’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I still come away with an admiration for the sheer artistry of the extremely small, scrappy, underdog advertising production operation Scott and Collins were running.

Disc One

1. When You Bake With Gold Medal Flour (Demo) – featuring Dorothy Collins (00:49)
2. The Taste Is Great (Tareyton Cigarettes) – featuring Dorothy Collins (00:46)
3. When You Shop at a Food Town Store (Vocal) – featuring Dorothy Collins (01:02)
4. Move Up to Schlitz – featuring Dorothy Collins (00:44)
5. It’s Compatible (RCA Victor TV) – featuring Dorothy Collins (01:15)
6. Male/Female Scott Family Napkins Themes (Instrumental) (02:33)
7. Road-Tuned Wheels (Mercury) – featuring Dorothy Collins (00:59)
8. It Outsells Because It Excels (Duquesne Beer) – featuring Dorothy Collins (00:34)
9. Hangover Dirt (Instant Fels Naptha) – featuring Dorothy Collins (01:00)
10. Think of a Carpet (Masland Carpets) [Instrumental] (01:02)
11. Stop at the Esso Sign (Rehearsal 1) – featuring Dorothy Collins (01:19)
12. S-W-E-L (Swel Frosting) – featuring Dorothy Collins (00:30)
13. Song of the Milk Bottle Moppets (Glass Container Institute) – featuring Dorothy Collins (00:19)
14. So Good, So Fresh, So Southern (Mel Tormé) [Southern Bread] – featuring Dorothy Collins (01:02)
15. The Tingling Tartness of Sprite (Instrumental) (01:02)
16. Use Vicks Medicated Cough Drops (Electronic Version) – featuring Dorothy Collins (00:29)
17. Stuckey’s Theme (Vocal) – featuring Dorothy Collins (01:02)
18. DX Super Boron (Sunray DX Oil Co.) [Demo] – featuring Dorothy Collins (01:01)
19. Vibes & Marimba (Instrumental) (01:02)
20. Miller Beer Theme (Instrumental Rehearsal) (01:20)
21. Uptempo Theme With Vibes (Instrumental) (00:26)
22. The Big M (Mercury) – featuring Dorothy Collins (01:31)
23. Be Happy, Go Lucky (Lucky Strike) – featuring Dorothy Collins (00:24)
24. There’s a Tingle in the Taste (Fitger’s Beer) – featuring Dorothy Collins (00:45)
25. Way Ahead in Flavor / Almost Like Magic (My-T-Fine Pudding) – featuring Dorothy Collins (00:47)
26. Scott Family Napkins Guidance Tracks – featuring Dorothy Collins (01:54)
27. Melonball Bounce (Sprite) [Instrumental] (00:59)
28. Go Greyhound – Leave the Driving to Us – featuring Dorothy Collins (00:59)
29. Today’s Best Buy (Plymouth) [Demo] – featuring Dorothy Collins (00:29)
30. Who Took the Beer? (Hamm’s Beer) – featuring Dorothy Collins (00:59)
31. The Fashion to Be Fashionable (Ford Galaxie) – featuring Dorothy Collins (01:02)
32. Dirty Carburetor #1 & #2 (Atlantic Imperial) – featuring Dorothy Collins (01:01)
33. Bottled Soft Drinks Serenade (Glass Container Institute) – featuring Dorothy Collins (00:18)
34. All-Purpose Breeze (Demo) – featuring Dorothy Collins (00:38)
35. The Only Candy Bar (Fifth Avenue) – featuring Dorothy Collins (00:30)
36. Better Get Some More Beer [Hamm’s Beer] – featuring Mel Tormé and Dorothy Collins (04:07)
37. Nothing Works Like Listerine – featuring Dorothy Collins (01:01)
38. Let’s Have a Sackful of Krystals (Krystal Hamburgers) – featuring Dorothy Collins (01:01)
39. Ex-Lax Helps You (Demo) – featuring Dorothy Collins (01:03)

Disc Two

1. Lady Gaylord (Ideal Toys) [Alternate Instrumental] (01:00)
2. Lilt Home Permanent (Procter & Gamble) [Demo] – featuring Dorothy Collins (01:20)
3. Think of a Carpet (Masland Carpets) [Vocal] – featuring Dorothy Collins (01:01)
4. Seven-Minute Fluffy (Swel Frosting) – featuring Dorothy Collins (01:02)
5. Super Cheer Detergent (Procter & Gamble) – featuring Dorothy Collins (00:23)
6. Look for That Hotpoint Difference – featuring Dorothy Collins (00:48)
7. Let’s Have a Sackful of Krystals (Krystal Hamburgers) [Instrumental] (01:00)
8. The Tingling Tartness of Sprite (Vocal) – featuring Dorothy Collins (00:30)
9. Good News – Here’s Hamm’s Beer – featuring Dorothy Collins (01:11)
10. What’s New, Bokoo? / An Unusual Name – featuring Dorothy Collins (01:04)
11. Buy a Carton of Lucky Strikes – featuring Dorothy Collins (00:42)
12. Right Car, Right Price (Chrysler) – featuring Dorothy Collins (01:08)
13. Wave Your Hair With Hudnut Care (Richard Hudnut) – featuring Dorothy Collins (00:44)
14. It’s the Ice-Creamiest (Russell’s Ice Cream) – featuring Dorothy Collins (01:00)
15. Stuckey’s Theme (Instrumental) (00:58)
16. WQXI Bumper Montage – featuring Dorothy Collins (01:43)
17. Use Vicks Medicated Cough Drops – featuring Dorothy Collins (01:01)
18. Delicate Theme (Instrumental) (00:59)
19. Use Trushay – featuring Dorothy Collins (00:24)
20. Tingle in the Taste (Fitger’s Beer) [Duet] – featuring Dorothy Collins (00:22)
21. The Big Change (RCA Victor TV) – featuring Dorothy Collins (00:36)
22. Use New Instant Autocrat (Autocrat Coffee) – featuring Dorothy Collins (00:31)
23. Hamm’s Beer Theme (Instrumental) (00:59)
24. Trushay Theme 1 (Instrumental) (00:19)
25. DX Super Boron (Sunray DX Oil Co.) [Instrumental] (01:02)
26. Melonball Bounce (Sprite) [Vocal] – featuring Dorothy Collins (01:00)
27. Stop at the Esso Sign (Rehearsal 2) – featuring Dorothy Collins (01:01)
28. Watch the Vibrations of a Tuning Fork (Bulova Accutron) – featuring Dorothy Collins (00:25)
29. Breeze Along With Ease – featuring Dorothy Collins (00:22)
30. Have a Duke (Duquesne Beer) – featuring Dorothy Collins (00:31)
31. RCA Victor High Fidelity Theme – featuring Dorothy Collins (01:10)
32. RFK, Liz & Dick, Nudity in Movies (Look Magazine) – featuring Dorothy Collins (00:28
33. When You Shop at a Food Town Store (Instrumental) (01:02)
34. Good News – Here’s Hamm’s Beer – featuring Mel Tormé and Dorothy Collins (04:01)
35. Best Looking Buys in Each Size (Mercury) – featuring Dorothy Collins (00:46)
36. New Sensations in Sound (RCA Victor TV) – featuring Dorothy Collins (01:23)
37. Make Him a Legend in His Own Time (British Sterling) – featuring Dorothy Collins (00:20)
38. Living Curl / They Did It! (Revlon Hair Spray) – featuring Dorothy Collins (01:32)
39. Lady Gaylord (Ideal Toys) [Trumpet Effects Instrumental] (00:57)
40. Keep on the Go With Atlantic (Atlantic Imperial) – featuring Dorothy Collins (01:29)
41. Look at That Sunbeam Bread! (Demo) – featuring Dorothy Collins (00:44)
42. Tart and Tingling (Sprite) [French Version] – featuring Dorothy Collins (01:00)
43. Trushay Theme 2 (Instrumental) (00:23

Released by: Modern Harmonic
Release date: December 13, 2019
Disc one running time: 40:31
Disc two running time: 41:18

The Mandalorian: Chapter 4 – music by Ludwig Goransson

The fourth chapter of The Mandalorian opens in a positively pastoral musical setting, with acoustic guitars setting a less menacing and less frenetic pace than the beginning of any episode of the show so far with the “Ponds Of Sorgan” track – so it can’t last, right? Of course not – within that same track, the agrarian village we’ve seen is attacked, and it’s kind of like the best cold open that a TV western could give you: before we even catch up with our hero(es), we are already acquainted with the situation that requires their intervention.

After Mando’s ship arrives, the peaceful sound returns (“Can I Feed Him?”) as he and the Child settle in with their new hosts. The action and tension return with “Training The Plebs”, and then chaos sets in with the inevitable “Camp Attack” and “Spirit Of The Woods”, the latter of which sees the raiders’ AT-ST come out of hiding and hesitate before plummeting into the trap set by Mando and Cara Dune.

A more relaxing pace returns in “Stay”, as the Mandalorian is tempted with the opportunity to stay on the planet, secluded and off the radar…until a burst of musical tension heralds the appearance of another bounty hunter trying to track down the Child; it turns out this chance to find some peace was only a limited time offer.

A nice change of pace musically, Chapter Four is a reminder of the vast breadth of musical styles that Ludwig Goransson brought to bear on something that a less talented composer would’ve just tried to make sound like cut-rate John Williams; instead, as is always the case with this series, he carves out his own path and really sets the stage for the story in the process.

1. The Ponds Of Sorgan (3:09)
2. Off The Grid (1:47)
3. Can I Feed Him? (3:34)
4. Training The Plebs (3:10)
5. Camp Attack (2:22)
6. Spirit Of The Woods (5:10)
7. Stay (2:21)
8. Mando Says Goodbye (1:20)

Released by: Disney Music
Release date: November 29, 2019
Total running time: 22:53

Crowded House – Afterglow (Deluxe Edition)

Released several years after the breakup of the original lineup of Crowded House, Afterglow was a collection of songs that had been relegated to B-sides, to soundtracks, and sometimes to the cutting room floor, never making it to an album but becoming a favorite in the band’s live show. There was material concurrent with all four of the band’s studio albums at the time, and it was something of a bittersweet revelation of how prolific the band was.

But if the original release was a fond reminder of that, the deluxe expanded 2-CD edition is a jaw-dropping revelation. It was known that, after the departure of Paul Hester from the drum seat, an attempt was made to soldier onward with Peter Jones, who had toured with the band after Hester’s abrupt mid-tour exit in 1994. Jones was heard on drums on the original Afterglow‘s incredibly atmospheric track “Help Is Coming”, so obvious some recording was done with him. But the biggest surprise of the second disc is a stretch of material revealing just how much was recorded with Jones – a series of songs that basically amount to an album side. So yes, the deluxe edition of Afterglow brings us half of a Crowded House album that could have been, and really should have been, because the studio demos are so polished – and just as atmospheric as “Help Is Coming” – that they’re sharper than some bands’ final studio masters, and they reveal a band that could very well have continued despite the unplanned personnel change.

After Neil Finn’s home demos of such songs as “Instinct” and “Everything Is Good For You”, the Finn/Seymour/Hart/Jones lineup returns with “Anthem”, a song Finn unearthed from the archives as a charity single a few years earlier, and while it lacks the polish of a finished track, it does show an arrangement that’s been worked out an honed, complete with vocal harmonies. The next track by this post-Together Alone lineup is even more surprising, featuring Mark Hart singing lead on a song that he wrote, “I Don’t Know You”. Again, the song is presented in a somewhat rough state, but one with a lot of promise. Hart eventually reclaimed “I Don’t Know You” for his solo album Nada Sonata, but there’s something stripped-down, bluesy, and incredibly catchy about the Crowded House rendition that may well make it superior to Hart’s final studio version. This should’ve been a single, though one wonders how a single without Finn’s voice (or writing credit) front and center might have been able to navigate the band’s complex internal politics.

Even more songs follow, including the trippy “A Taste Of Something Divine”, which could almost be in late ’90s U2’s wheelhouse rather than what anyone would’ve been expecting from Crowded House. If this is what the band could’ve accomplished with Jones on drums, it’s kind of a glimpse into an alternate universe where Together Alone was followed by even edgier, more out-there changes in style.

Following a nice, folksy rendition of “Spirit Of The Stairs” (a favorite in the Crowdies’ live set), this lineup drops one last surprise with a hard-hitting rendition of “Loose Tongue”, a song which eventually migrated to Finn’s first solo album, 1998’s Try Whistling This. Upon hearing that album in 1998, I remember asking myself “Why was it necessary to break up Crowded House to do this album?”, and this version of “Loose Tongue” really brings that question back. There was very little of Try Whistling This that couldn’t have been done by the full Crowded House lineup.

But the alternate timeline in which Crowded House with Peter Jones in tow ventures into more adventurous musical territory ends there; the rest of disc two is rounded out with the three “new” songs from the 1996 greatest hits album, “Instinct”, “Not The Girl You Think You Are”, and “Everything Is Good For You”, all of them “safer”, more traditional Crowded House songs with Mitchell Froom at the mixing board and Paul Hester on drums.

The musical equivalent of deleted scenes is what Afterglow was always about, but the expanded edition offers a truly eye-opening glimpse into what could have been if Together Alone had been but the beginning of an experimental phase, and not the end of one. Very few expanded reissues of existing albums justify the double-dip like this one does.

Disc One

1. I Am In Love (4:37)
2. Sacred Cow (3:36)
3. You Can Touch (3:45)
4. Help Is Coming (4:48)
5. I Love You Dawn (2:33)
6. Dr. Livingston (3:56)
7. My Tellys’ Gone Bung (3:10)
8. Private Universe (4:07)
9. Lester (2:19)
10. Anyone Can Tell (3:35)
11. Recurring Dream (3:23)
12. Left Hand (2:57)
13. Time Immemorial (4:06)

Disc Two

1. I Am In Love (Home Demo) (2:07)
2. Instinct (Home Demo) (2:03)
3. Spirit Of The Stairs (Home Demo) (3:39)
4. I’m So Scared Of Losing I Can’t Compete (Home Demo) (2:11)
5. Everything Is Good For You (Home Demo) (3:14)
6. Not The Girl You Think You Are (Home Demo) (3:00)
7. Anthem (3:31)
8. I Don’t Know You (Studio Demo) (3:40)
9. A Taste Of Something Divine (Studio Demo) (4:14)
10. Spirit Of The Stairs (Studio Demo) (4:55)
11. Loose Tongue
12. Rough Mix (3:51)
13. Instinct (3:06)
14. Everything Is Good For You (3:52)
15. Not The Girl You Think You Are (4:08)
16.  

Released by: Capitol Records
Release date: November 18, 2016
Disc one running time: 46:51
Disc two running time: 47:31

What We Left Behind – music by Dennis McCarthy and Kevin Kiner

If there was ever a way to gauge how passionately fans of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine were willing to go to bat for a series that remains something of the bastard stepchild of the franchise, all one had to do was promise a documentary interviewing all of the major players, and then crowdfund that documentary. Then you just sit back and watch how many of the stretch goals go whizzing by as the production is funded.

One of those stretch goals was to hire the original composer of the Deep Space Nine theme and most of the series’ episodes, Dennis McCarthy, to score the documentary, What We Left Behind. McCarthy was not only game for returning to the Star Trek universe, but he brought with him Kevin Kiner, a frequent collaborator from McCarthy’s years providing music for the ratings-challenged, budget-addled Star Trek: Enterprise. As that show’s music budget was repeatedly slashed, McCarthy would lean on Kiner to bring the music to life electronically, since the money for an orchestra was no longer necessarily on the table. By the time McCarthy brought Kiner in the perform much the same function on What We Left Behind, Kiner was a composer in his own right, having scored nearly the entirety of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, numerous early episodes of Stargate SG-1, and a second animated series, Star Wars: Rebels.

There’s one component of the documentary where bringing McCarthy back into the fold really pays major dividends. The show’s storied writers’ room is reassembled – a room now made not of rookie TV writers, but of high-powered Hollywood showrunners in their own right – with their old boss, Ira Steven Behr (also the frequent narrator/muse of the documentary), to break down the story for an entirely hypothetical season 8 premiere. As they devise the story, it’s brought to life by artwork and by McCarthy’s music, which is authentic as one could get without actually digging up McCarthy’s 1990s session tapes. The result is an authentic Deep Space Nine story with authentic Deep Space Nine music, one of the highlights of the whole project. In a few other cases, McCarthy ends up rescoring scenes he originally scored in the ’90s. With Kiner’s considerable skill at electronically recreating orchestral bombast, the results are genuinely thrilling.

McCarthy and Kiner bring more modern sensibilities to tracks like “Mr. Brooks”, “Killing Will Robinson”, and “Racial Inequalities”. From the jauntiness to the electronic percussion elements of these tracks, there’s a clear musical dividing line between “documentary” and “breaking the story for an unmade season 8 premiere”.

The all-star barbershop quartet of DS9 veterans – Casey Biggs, Jeffrey Combs, Armin Shimerman, and Max Grodenchik – also appear on the soundtrack with their renditions of classic standards (now with Deep-Space-Nine-inspired lyrics, i.e. “I Left My Quark And Captain Sisko” to the tune of “I Left My Heart In San Francisco”). These interludes were a highlight of a documentary that tried very hard to give the impression that it wasn’t taking itself too seriously, and is an extension of Biggs’ and Grodenchik’s convention party piece. (It’s especially nice to have these songs handy in a year where conventions have abruptly become as much a distant memory as the show itself.)

So if you were wondering why you should bother with a soundtrack that isn’t even from one of the Star Trek series, but rather a documentary about that series, it’s pretty simple: by bringing Dennis McCarthy and Kevin Kiner back into the Trek universe, the result is something that earns its place alongside the music from the series itself. Much like the entirely hypothetical season 8 premiere, it’s a tantalizing glimpse into a Star Trek tale that could’ve kept on going.

1. Main Title (0:12)
2. Through A Glass Darkly (0:57)
3. I Left My Quark and Captain Sisko (2:10)
4. Reunion (2:40)
5. Big Space / Fun Voyages (0:37)
6. Mr. Brooks (3:03)
7. Concept Art / Production Design (2:47)
8. Actor Interaction / DS9 Renaissance / Promise to be Back (3:05)
9. Writers Intro / New Episode (4:58)
10. Explosion (1:33)
11. Evolving Characters I / Friendship to Romance (1:32)
12. Grey Character (2:54)
13. Evolving Characters II / Recurring Characters (1:46)
14. Killing Will Robinson (2:29)
15. Galactic War Saga / Sacrifice of Angels (3:04)
16. Writers’ Room I (2:48)
17. Haven’t Advanced Much (1:33)
18. Racial Inequalities (1:45)
19. Writers’ Room II (2:30)
20. Action Barbie / Being Heard (3:03)
21. Intro Ezri (1:28)
22. Bashir (1:16)
23. The Cost of War (1:16)
24. Real World Issues (2:53)
25. Section 31 (3:49)
26. Finale (5:58)
27. What We Left Behind (Vocal) (2:48)
28. In Memorium (0:43)
29. End Credits (3:12)
30. DS9 Rocks (1:29)
31. What We Left Behind Trailer (2:27)
32. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Main Title for Solo Piano “After 3:00 AM at Quarks” (5:09)

Released by: BSX Records
Release date: October 11, 2019
Total running time: 1:17:54

Rob Dougan – Misc. Sessions

From 2016 through 2019, Rob Dougan – an artist who had been absent since making a splash in the early 2000s when instrumental versions of some his music were included in key scenes of The Matrix Reloaded – resurfaced in the crowdfunded music arena to see if there was support for him to make new music. With Dougan, whose signature style is to add his rough-and-ready, almost-spoken-word vocals to a string section and either a live drummer or a drum machine, this was going to take a bit of investment from his fans. (As someone who enjoyed Dougan’s previous solo effort, Furious Angels, I was one of those pitched in.) The result was a series of EPs, released as the songs were recorded two, three, or four at a time.

The Misc. Sessions was my runaway favorite of this series of EPs. It’s the one that bears the most resemblance to Furious Angels in its lyrics and music, and it forms a kind of short, bittersweet song cycle unto itself, chronicling either the end of a relationship or perhaps the simultaneous end of several relationships. “She’s Leaving” is pretty self-explanatory, a kind of musical travelogue of what’s left of a home once shared by two, name-checking the things that she deemed unimportant enough to leave behind as reminders.

But the next two songs, “Undone By London” and “Open Sore”, are the real heart of the song cycle, dealing with the aftermath of what was described in the previous song. These two songs flow together nearly seamlessly – one begins in the same key and the same chord with which the other ends – and Dougan’s vocal delivery in “Undone” borders on unhinged the further he gets into the song. “Open Sore” is a bit more calm and accepting of what’s happened, but still darkly bittersweet. “Miscellaneous” is a bit more light-hearted, catching up with where she winds up next, and then we revisit the unhinged anguish of “Undone By London”…by playing it backward as a kind of twisted coda.

If Dougan’s voice doesn’t do it for you – which I get, his tuneful-but-about-as-smooth-as-sandpaper delivery is an acquired taste – the entire song is then repeated in two forms: instrumental (everything except Dougan’s voice and any backing vocals) and “orchestra only” (eliminating not just vocals, but drums, piano and other more conventional “band” instruments). These repeated tracks boost the EP to LP length, while also offering those interested a chance to study Dougan’s orchestral writing and arranging more closely. (It’s here that you really get a feel for how seamlessly “Undone By London” segues into “Open Sore”.)

It’s a lovely package, though for me the appeal is…I really like the songs. They hit me at a time when I myself was recovering from being undone (though not in London), from walking into a home that was suddenly empty of other people, and this little abbreviated song cycle helped me work through some of that. There may have even been a few cathartic, bloodletting singalongs – you’d have to ask my cats.

1. She’s Leaving (4:19)
2. Undone By London (4:27)
3. Open Sore (4:58)
4. Miscellaneous (3:53)
5. Undone By London (Reprise) (4:01)
6. She’s Leaving (Instrumental) (4:03)
7. Undone By London (Instrumental) (4:25)
8. Open Sore (Instrumental) (4:59)
9. Miscellaneous (Instrumental) (3:56)
10. Undone by London (Orchestral only) (4:02)
11. Open Sore (Orchestral only) (4:40)
12. Miscellaneous (Orchestral only) (3:51)

Released by: Rob Dougan
Release date: October 23, 2016
Total running time: 51:34

The Mandalorian: Chapter 3 – music by Ludwig Goransson

The third chapter of The Mandalorian really sets up the core conflict of the entire show: having retrieved “the asset”, Mando delivers it as promised…and then, feeling remorse because he too was once a child rescued from near-certain death, he ends his career as a bounty hunter by doubling back to rescue his quarry – in short, by caring.

Since the story deals with a decision that is, at its most basic, an emotional one, the music is surprisingly clinical for this episode, leaning heavily on electronic minimalism. That in itself is not entirely surprising; since this is a conflict playing out in the Star Wars universe, there are going to be blasters and explosions involved, and anything too musically involved would wind up getting severely dialed down in the final sound mix.

That said, the music does have its moments. The somewhat dissonant theme for the Mandalorians as a whole, the musical signature of the Mandalorian way of life, makes itself known as Mando’s new suit of armor is being forged, and to a lesser extent as the Armourer has to smooth over a disagreement among her fellow Mandalorians on the subject of accepting work from a leftover remnant of the Empire. But after a tender statement of the Child’s theme, the “Mandalorian Way” motif finally gets a bold, triumphant, major-key statement as the entire Mandalorian covert makes itself known, turning Mando’s hopeless attempt to reach his ship with the Child into an even fight. It’s a fight that’ll have serious consequences later in the season, but here it’s good news, and it’s got a hell of a scene to accompany, with Mandalorians dropping into a fierce firefight the likes of which had only previously been achieved in animation (or by nine-year-old kids playing with a 12-inch Boba Fett figure and wondering what the jet pack accessory was all about – or, um, so I’ve heard). The more celebratory tone continues into the episode-closing “I Need One Of Those” cue.

I try not to recommend an entire soundtrack on the basis of a single track, but in The Mandalorian, it was such a rarity to hear something in major keys that this one really stands out. The series and its composer really succeeded in redefining the music vocabulary of Star Wars. In short, you need one of these.

1. A New Day (5:30)
2. Mandalore Way (3:21)
3. Signet Forging (2:02)
4. Second Thoughts (4:19)
5. Whistling Bird (2:22)
6. Mando Rescue (2:14)
7. I Need On Of Those (1:34)

Released by: Disney Music
Release date: November 22, 2019
Total running time: 21:22

The Lickerish Quartet – Threesome, Vol. 1

Lickerish Quartet is a collision of former members of Jellyfish and/or offshoots of Jellyfish, two categories you’ll often find in the same record collection. Jellyfish lasted long enough for two albums; a posthumous box set of live cuts, demos, and collaborations rounded out the band’s legacy, but still left a lot of potential on the table. Many a Jellyfish fan (like the scruffy fellow I occasionally spy in mirrors and other reflective surfaces) obsessively follows the individual former members of the group through their solo careers and later work with other artists – and sometimes minor family reunions like this one. With Jellyfish founding member Roger Manning and Spilt Milk-members (and former Umajets) Tim Smith and Eric Dover aboard, Lickerish Quartet is indeed something of a family reunion. The plan is for the band to gradually write, record, and release a series of EPs, each supported by fan pre-orders, so that the end result will be about an album’s worth of music.

Threesome Vol. 1 is the first of those, with the “threesome” in the title describing the band; “quartet” is actually a better description of the number of songs on this first volume, somewhat confusingly. But that’s the kind of perversely anarchic humor that we’re expecting from Jellyfish alumni, right?

That sense of humor also extends into the first song, “Fadoodle”, whose lyrics can best be summed up as “I cleaned house and did some chores, can I get laid now?” (Pro tip: guys…you should be doing your share of the housework because it’s part of the unspoken social contract of sharing space with other human beings, not because you’re expecting sex at the end of said chore.) Maybe I’m just showing my age here, but these lyrics and their dancing-between-sung-and-spoken-word delivery didn’t land with me, even though the music itself is fine; there’s a great bass line that makes it all incredibly catchy, and the instrumental bridge may be the best thing about the song.

“Bluebird’s Blues” is a definite improvement, and perhaps should’ve been first song (though I do get it, if you’re banking on the Jellyfish connection, “Fadoodle” sounds more whimsical and Jellyfish-esque than anything else here). Together with “There Is A Number”, “Bluebird’s Blues” really digs into that ’70s power-pop sound, which is really what I hope to hear out of a reunion of any configuration of Jellyfish, a lot more than I hope to hear whimsy. They’re both excellent songs, though I get a chuckle out of the first lyric in “There Is A Number”: “I never meant to cause you too much pain.” Is there really some acceptable amount of pain one can cause others before a line is crossed? (As with the playful lyrics of “Fadoodle”, I’m probably overthinking it here.)

“Lighthouse Spaceship” was the song most heavily promoted prior to the EP’s release, and with good reason: where “Bluebird’s Blues” and “There Is A Number” are classic bittersweet ballads, “Lighthouse Spaceship” is a straight-up, unapologetic rocker that reaches for – and just about achieves – a late ’60s/early ’70s psychedelic rock flavor with both its lyrics and its instrumentation. At over six minutes, I get why this wasn’t the lead track, but it seems obvious that the band realized this was the strongest thing in this particular track listing.

It’s all worth a listen, and perhaps best of all is the promise that more from this lineup – and perhaps even better material – is yet to come.

1. Fadoodle (3:46)
2. Bluebird’s Blues (4:31)
3. There Is A Magic Number (4:14)
4. Lighthouse Spaceship (6:26)

Released by: InGrooves / Label Logic
Release date: May 15, 2020
Total running time: 18:57

The Mandalorian: Chapter 2 – music by Ludwig Goransson

If there was an episode of The Mandalorian in which Ludwig Goransson could shine brightly, Chapter 2 was definitely it – there’s a lengthy stretch of the episode where not a word of English is spoken, and the story is punctuated by grunts, groans, and Jawa-speak. It’s not until Mando returns to Kuill’s settlement to ask for help that anyone in this episode talks. Everything during that time is conveyed by body language, visual effects…and the music.

That’s part of what makes “Jawa Attack” such an unashamedly big piece of music. Aside from sound effects, the show’s main character grunting as he tries to muscle his way through his opposition, and the Jawas doing what Jawas always do in Star Wars mythology – namely, stripping ships and vehicles and leaving them on blocks – there’s nothing in the music’s way. Though not as action-packaged, “Trahsed Crest” is also a musical moment that gets to happen with minimal interruption. “To The Jawas” is an in-your-face travelogue that takes the Manadlorian from Kuill’s settlement to the Jawas’ sandcrawler, with echoes of “Jawas Attack” thrown in as a motif. The Jawa motif returns in full force at the beginning of “The Egg”, which then gradually becomes more moody and electronic as Mando (and the tiny child who is now, almost inexplicably, tagging along on one of Mando’s most dangerous encounters).

“The Mudhorn” is largely electronic, giving the beast a truly otherworldly yet primal rhythm, an element that is brought up short when the child brings the Mudhorn to a standstill with the Force, culminating in a much more full-bodied version of the theme for the child hear at the end of the show’s first episode. “Celebration” brings the Jawa motif back in a major key, as we discover that they sent the Mandalorian into a life-threatening situation to fetch them a snack. I mean, really, it’s like he got them a bag of real Cheetos instead of the store brand bag that doesn’t quite taste the same. Remind me never to go grocery shopping for Jawas.

This episode may well be the strongest, musically, until the closing two episodes of the season, giving Goransson a chance to go nuts and really lay out the show’s musical manifesto with a minimum of spoken dialogue to get in the way. This was where we really found out that this show’s musical voice was an amazing character in its own right.

1. Walking On Mud (1:38)
2. Jawas Attack (3:46)
3. Trashed Crest (2:18)
4. To The Jawas (1:35)
5. The Egg (2:54)
6. The Mudhorn (3:00)
7. Celebration (3:31)
8. The Next Journey (2:35)

Released by: Disney Music
Release date: November 15, 2019
Total running time: 21:17

Doctor Who: The Five Doctors – music by Peter Howell

It says a lot for the evolution, over time, of what listeners expect from a soundtrack purchase, when one considers that The Five Doctors – the 90-minute Doctor Who 20th anniversary special – once lent its name to an LP of “suites” from various 1980s Doctor Who stories, but didn’t merit its own full soundtrack release until 35 years after its 1983 premiere. But now that it’s here, was it worth the wait?

In the liner notes, composer Peter Howell himself says that he was firing on all creative cylinders in a way that he hadn’t before. The Five Doctors was a special production, not part of an ongoing season, so there was a bit of breathing room to come up with ideas. The Five Doctors score is one of the high water marks of 1980s Doctor Who soundtrack music, being possibly the first use of sampling, or at least the first use of sampling as a key part of the music. The unearthly, menacing exclamation point of the Cybermen’s percussive music cues is the slowed-down sound of a lid being pulled off of a metal can. The foreboding horn heard in the Death Zone on Gallifrey isn’t a brass musican instrument, but a sampled ship’s horn. And the Time Lord-centric story gets appropriately clock-like percussive elements, very much a first in Doctor Who.

Of course, none of that would really matter if Peter Howell wasn’t one of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop’s masters of memorable melodies. It really wasn’t until the Radiophonic Workshop came along that any of the show’s various resident composers had employed Ron Grainer’s theme tune as a leitmotif; even Dudley Simpson crafted his own theme for the Doctor that had virtually nothing to do with Grainer’s theme. But here, Howell leans hard on the show’s signature theme throughout the adventure, which really helps to point up the momentous nature of the story being told: the story doesn’t just involve the Doctor, it’s about the Doctor and the Time Lords. And it’s not just the motif itself, but the fact that it’s still – after 20 years – the BBC Radiophonic Workshop doing the honors, bringing all of the lovely analog tricks and reverb to the table in quoting that theme authentically. The Five Doctors was really the first Doctor Who music that even a non-fan could listen to and say, “That’s Doctor Who music, isn’t it?”

Much of the second half of the disc repeats the score, but with some sonic enhancements Howell added for a 1990s extended VHS reissue of the story, which restored some deleted scenes and added new effects, forcing Howell to rethink sections of the score to match the new edit. Bonus tracks include the “cliffhangers” composed for syndicated versions of The Five Doctors that broke the story up into a traditional four-parter, as well as some Radiophonic Workshop sound effects.

It all adds up to a long, long overdue package. I know that there was a fairly comprehensive suite of highlights from the score of The Five Doctors on CD and, before that, on LP going back to 1984, and I know that the score was available on DVD as an isolated audio track…but it really has been a long wait for a properly remastered release of the original, pre-special-edition score as I remember hearing it back in 1983 when The Five Doctors blew my mind by finally showing me all of the Doctors and companions that I’d only read about in Starlog. It’s nice to finally have it, and even with all of the widescreen orchestral grandeur that has become the sound of Doctor Who since the turn of the century, The Five Doctors remains one of the show’s all-time great scores.

1. Doctor Who – Opening Theme (0:36)
2. New Console (0:24)
3. The Eye Of Orion (0:57)
4. Cosmic Angst (1:18)
5. Melting Icebergs (0:40)
6. Great Balls Of Fire (1:02)
7. My Other Selves (0:38)
8. No Coordinates (0:26)
9. Bus Stop (0:23)
10. No Where, No Time (0:31)
11. Dalek Alley and The Death Zone (3:00)
12. Hand In The Wall (0:21)
13. Who Are You? (1:04)
14. The Dark Tower / My Best Enemy (1:24)
15. The Game Of Rassilon (0:18)
16. Cybermen I (0:22)
17. Below (0:29)
18. Cybermen II (0:58)
19. The Castellan Accused / Cybermen III (0:34)
20. Raston Robot (0:24)
21. Not The Mind Probe (0:10)
22. Where There’s A Wind, There’s A Way (0:43)
23. Cybermen vs. Raston Robot (2:02)
24. Above And Between (1:41)
25. As Easy As Pi (0:23)
26. Phantoms (1:41)
27. The Tomb Of Rassilon (0:24)
28. Killing You Once Was Never Enough (0:39)
29. Oh, Borusa (1:21)
30. Mindlock (1:12)
31. Immortality (1:18)
32. Doctor Who Closing Theme – The Five Doctors Edit (1:19)
33. Death Zone Atmosphere (3:51)
34. End of Episode 1 (Sarah Falls) (0:11)
35. End of Episode 2 (Cybermen III variation) (0:13)
36. End of Episode 3 (Nothing to Fear) (0:09)
37. The Five Doctors Special Edition: Prologue (Premix) (1:22)

    Special Edition

38. Doctor Who – Opening Theme (0:35)
39. Prologue (1:17)
40. The Eye Of Orion / Cosmic Angst (2:22)
41. Melting Icebergs (0:56)
42. Great Balls Of Fire (0:56)
43. My Other Selves (0:35)
44. Nothing Can Go Wrong (0:35)
45. Bus Stop (0:22)
46. No Where, No Time (0:36)
47. Enter Borusa (0:28)
48. Enter The Master (0:14)
49. Dalek Alley and The Death Zone (3:06)
50. Hand In The Wall (0:20)
51. Recall Signal (0:34)
52. Who Are You? / Tell Me All About It (0:49)
53. Thunderbolts (0:33)
54. The Dark Tower (0:25)
55. My Best Enemy (1:11)
56. The Game Of Rassilon (0:17)
57. Cybermen I (0:22)
58. Below (0:43)
59. Cybermen II (1:12)
60. The Castellan Accused / Cybermen III (0:35)
61. Raston Robot (0:24)
62. Not The Mind Probe (0:32)
63. Where There’s A Wind, There’s A Way (0:31)
64. Cybermen vs. Raston Robot (2:04)
65. Above And Between (1:41)
66. The Fortress Of The Time Lords (1:04)
67. As Easy As Pi (0:22)
68. I Hope You’ve Got Your Sums Right / Phantoms (2:29)
69. The Tomb Of Rassilon (0:29)
70. Killing You Once Was Never Enough (1:26)
71. Oh, Borusa (1:21)
72. Mindlock (1:11)
73. Immortality (1:17)
74. Doctor Who Closing Theme – The Five Doctors Edit (1:16)
75. The Eye Of Orion Atmosphere (3:07)
76. Time Scoop (0:24)
77. Transmat Operates (0:09)
78. Rassilon Background (3:49)
79. Borusa Ring Sequence (0:37)
80. The Five Doctors Titles Zap (0:10)

Released by: Silva Screen
Release date: September 14, 2018
Total running time: 77:56