New Moon album brings surprisingly unique flavor

By Eric Doctor     10/22/09 7:00pm

Last month, a news item popped up in my Pitchfork RSS feed that made me do a double-take. The headline read, "Grizzly Bear to appear on The Twilight Saga: New Moon Soundtrack."For those who haven't gone outside in the last year, lest the sun reveal their sparkly-diamond vampire skin, Twilight is the popular and poorly-written book series that became an even-more-popular book series after the movie adaptation came out last November. Millions of pubescent girls - and some of my college-aged female friends - fawned over Robert Pattinson, wrote terrible fanfiction and made their own playlists for each book.

This is precisely why the Pitchfork reports on this soundtrack confused me: The tracklist for the New Moon soundtrack looks nothing like any of the fan playlists I've seen floating around. If Twilight were a genre of music, it would be pop-punk - influenced by legitimately original material from decades before, projecting an air of edginess but ultimately coming in as pre-packaged commercial tripe with no identity of its own. The kind of stuff teenagers who are trying to be "cool" and "different" eat up.

The New Moon soundtrack, on the other hand, is made up of such names as Thom Yorke, Bon Iver, Lykke Li and the aforementioned Grizzly Bear. There are a few more expected names, like Death Cab for Cutie, The Killers and Muse, but pop-punk is conspicuously absent.

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New Moon's music supervisor is Alexandra Patsavas, who is best known for her work on "Grey's Anatomy," "The OC" and "Gossip Girl." Patsavas has gained a reputation for assembling playlists of music ever so slightly out of the mainstream, a certain brand of radio-friendly, mid-tempo indie rock made up of bands like Snow Patrol, Arctic Monkeys and Vampire Weekend.

And that's what most of the New Moon soundtrack is. Nearly all of the tracks feature a steady drum beat with a simple-but-catchy guitar hook on top, plus straightforward lyrics in a traditional A-B-A-B structure. It's all very vanilla.

That's not to say that the music is bad; it's just not particularly original or outstanding. There are a few gems, like Bon Iver and St. Vincent's "Rosyln," which has a steady acoustic guitar driving the song with Annie Clark and Justin Vernon's airy vocals floating on top. Grizzly Bear's contribution, "Slow Life," set with Beach House's Victoria Legrand, has a typically rich chorus, but ultimately both Grizzly Bear and Bon Iver have produced better work elsewhere.

The Killers' "A White Demon Love Song" is intriguing, if only because frontman Brandon Flowers hangs out near the bottom of his range the whole time, not launching into the vocal acrobatics for which he is known. Muse, whose "Supermassive Black Hole" was on the previous Twilight soundtrack, submit a remix of "I Belong to You" that removes the French center section and the bass clarinet ending - the things that make the original song interesting. It also seems as though the backing track is ramped up, which makes Matthew Bellamy's lofty voice sound misplaced over the punchy drums.

Ultimately, the New Moon soundtrack will not really offend anyone, nor should it impress anyone. The singles stand adequately on their own, but fans of the artists on this album will not find anything revelatory, and newcomers would be better served by checking out these bands' other material.

The being said, it is a minor miracle, and an incredible compliment, that Patsavas' compilation attracted my attention in the first place. While the album may not stand out on its own, the fact that it adds an air of legitimacy to an otherwise trite and nauseating brand is an undeniable achievement.

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