Top 5 Muse Soundtracked Film Scenes

(5) New Moon
‘I Belong to You’ is a great song, and Matt Bellamy even re-worked some elements of it for the purposes of this movie, but of all the films to waste it on… I don’t think I could ever stomach re-watching New Moon; with its endless moping by Kristen Stewart and its failure by Taylor Lautner to make any impression despite an ocean of screen time because his dialogue is so poorly written; even to enjoy hearing it.
 
(4) Eclipse
The throwaway nature of this usage of Muse is rather hilarious and is what makes it noteworthy. Director David Slade (former music videos lenser) puts the soaring track ‘Neutron Star Collision’ on a stereo in the background of a party scene so that Anna Kendrick can excitedly say ‘Oh, I love this song’, before the camera pans away from her to follow other characters away from the music and towards the actual dramatic purpose of the scene. Delightful.
 
(3) Southland Tales
Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales is a fascinating mess but it does have any number of memorable moments, and many of the best involve music: The Rock running scared to the surf version of the Pixies’ ‘Wave of Mutilation’, Justin Timberlake showily performing The Killers’ ‘All These Things That I Have Done’, and Muse’s magisterial ‘Blackout’ providing a suitably odd soundtrack to a scene where The Rock, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Mandy Moore clash at an opulent mansion.
 
(2) Twilight
The greatest cinematic game of baseball ever played sees the Cullen family take advantage of an approaching thunderstorm to hide the tremendous cracking sound made when a super-strong vampire batter hits a baseball thrown by a super-strong vampire pitcher. Thirteen director Catherine Hardwicke’s gritty films may make her appear miserable but soundtracking this with Muse’s incredibly funky (and allegedly a parodic attempt at doing a Britney Spears song) ‘Supermassive Black Hole’ shows a well cultivated sense of fun.
 
(1) Switchblade Romance
Alexandre Aja’s French shocker from 2003 has, for me, made the best use of any movie of Muse’s unique sound. Cecile de France, having been scared out of her wits while stealthily hiding from the psychotic trucker who has slain her friend’s family and kidnapped her friend, is reborn as an avenging fury when she roars off after him in a yellow sports car to the sound of ‘Newborn’ by Muse; escalating in as the car-chase proceeds.

Roger Daltrey @ the Park

Roger Daltrey was always bound to be highlight of the @thePark series of concerts this summer and so it proved last Tuesday.

The recession appears to be biting hard as Marlay Park remained open during the concert; which was restricted to half the size of previous events, and under canvass in a marquee tent rather than in the open air in front of Marlay House. Daltrey is back on the road as a solo artist owing to Pete Townshend’s increasing hearing difficulties, and, back-dropped by original animations from London art-school students, he’s playing all of The Who’s seminal 1969 rock-opera Tommy. Daltrey started at the staggeringly early time of 8:17pm, catching most of the crowd off-guard, leading to a stampede into the tent. This intimate venue easily allowed me to get the closest to the stage I’ve been since seeing Frank Black in the Temple Bar Music Centre in 2003.

Daltrey stated he needed to warm up his voice after getting frozen at an open-air gig in Norfolk the day before and so belted out Who classics ‘I Can See For Miles’, ‘Pictures of Lilly’ and ‘Tattoo’, as well as his collaboration with The Chieftains, before the main event. Daltrey’s onstage introduction dismissed previous attempts by The Who to perform Tommy as ‘circus versions’ – played too fast, lacking the proper instruments, and ignoring the play of various voices. Here then was Tommy as it was meant to be performed, with guitarist Simon Townshend taking over vocal duties on a number of songs to flesh out the fictional universe. Daltrey meanwhile brought out the different characters in his array of songs, with his wonderfully sinister vocals when assuming the role of Uncle Ernie a highlight; especially his chilling delivery of the one word ‘Welcome…’ at the end of ‘Tommy’s Holiday Camp’. A huge cheer greeted the album’s sing-along track, ‘Pinball Wizard’, but the whole rendition was a triumph. The semi-abstract visuals banished all memory of Ken Russell’s filmic vision, while the amazing variety, and play of light and dark, in Townshend’s music and lyrics has never been more dazzlingly displayed. The clear anticipations of Led Zeppelin and Bowie hits to be heard in some songs demonstrated the influence of this work.

After Tommy Daltrey’s band launched into some playful interpretations of the obligatory Who classics including ‘Who Are You?’ ‘My Generation’, ‘Behind Blue Eyes’, and ‘The Kids Are Alright’. A highlight was a thrilling ‘Baba O’Riley’ ending with Daltrey himself playing the run-away violin finale part on harmonica. They continued with an affectionate Johnny Cash medley, and some extended blues jams, and the theme song ‘Without Your Love’ from Daltrey’s film McVicar, before appropriately ending with just Daltrey playing the Who rarity ‘Red, Blue and Grey’ on the ukulele. Tommy is a dark album but this was a luminous performance… Daltrey left the stage at 10:53pm, having played for a whopping 2 hours 36 minutes.

Not bad for a 67 year old. And he still swings a mean microphone too…

4/5

Scary Covers and Super Creeps

The time has come for this blog’s first foray into music criticism, to bitch about a bad cover version of ‘Creep’…

I never saw the trailer for The Social Network that was sound-tracked by Radiohead’s ‘Creep’ being performed by an angelic sounding choir, but I’ve heard it raved over ever since. However I’ve just seen an all-female choir, led by a male conductor and accompanied by a male pianist, perform what appears to be that self-same version on Conan and I disliked it enough to really think hard about just why I didn’t love it as I apparently ought to… I mean, I’m a fan of Tori Amos, I like Radiohead, and I loved The Social Network; so when all these elements combine in this cover version it should be the perfect storm of stuff I really dig, no? No, as it turns out.

This version no doubt works brilliantly in the truncated setting of a trailer as background music to a montage of Sorkin’s most biting dialogue and Fincher’s coolest shots, but, stripped of such distraction and heard at full length, it’s a disaster. ‘Creep’ is an anthem of self-loathing, and I can’t help but feel it loses something when your visual frame is seeing it being performed by a choir of pretty women rather than underscoring the wincing misadventures of a jerk. Moreover ‘Creep’ is a grunge anthem. Listen to how it works; soft verse, loud chorus, soft verse, loud chorus, very loud (where the guitars get ever more frenzied as Yorke’s vocals soar), very soft verse and chorus (for the collapse into utter self-loathing); it’s an incredibly dramatic dynamic that is a major part of what makes the song so exhilarating, yet it is completely obliterated by the choir’s version, which, apart from a sotto voce whispered delivery during the final chorus, renders all the verses and choruses with the exact same level of intensity. Equally lacking is the contrast between Yorke’s verses and his sky-scraping ‘She is running out the door’ break; there is nothing remarkable about a female choir hitting those high notes which he invests with such tortured grace. But such monotony of volume and range destroys the song.

It’s as if the people behind this cover saw a chance to ‘do a Tori Amos’; which in their understanding simply meant take a grunge song, mute it, put it on piano with female vocals and wow everyone. But it doesn’t work, because that’s not what Tori Amos does. Amos is too innately theatrical to ever consider performing a song in such a monotonous fashion as this ‘Creep’. Her version of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ is an emotional threnody, while her rendition of ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’ buckles with restrained emotion threatening to burst through. Put simply Amos is incapable of singing without feeling, whereas the choral version of ‘Creep’, while being technically flawless, is almost entirely lacking in feeling.

Oddly enough there’s a phrase for just this sort of thing. Once more, with feeling…