Music in July 2023
St. Vincent’s work is often brilliant and strange, and this is no exception – an incredibly complex and mesmerizing sonic tide. Then we have two neoclassical pieces that might as well be polar opposites – Shiro Sagisu’s lazy riverboat of a tune, and Jessica Curry’s intense choral fantasy novel of music.
All I can say about Wolf Alice is that sometimes I enjoy brash rude music, especially if I have put some piece of work off too long, and now I finally have got to get around to it at last. But the team up of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs with Perfume Genius produced something truly grand. Spitting Off the Edge of the World actually conveys the feeling of sitting on the rim of one of those grand cliffs in Utah, with a whole desert spreading out below your dangling feet.
Cho Young-Wuk’s score for Oldboy feels exactly like being on a merry-go-round, oddly warm and gentle in its way. Then we have another recording from Toko Miura, who starred in the the best film of 2021, Drive My Car. This music is unrelated, but it has the same sense of pained and sensitive anticipation, like waiting for the cloudbreak on a wet April day. And that cloudbreak comes in the form of another of Takagi’s collaborations with Ann Sally, his go-to sentimental soloist.
Magical Romantic Freestyle is a typically demented work from World’s End Girlfriend, who can always be relied upon to unveil something compelling and twisted. The Young Thousands is also typical of its artist – yet another song from The Mountain Goats which sounds like it speaks directly to the grand sweep of life. I sometimes feel John Darnielle is the lyrical equivalent of Alice Munro. Then we have three frenetic and hurried alt rock songs, each rushing forward, chasing the finish line.
Finally, there are two scores – first, from Living, the excellent remake of the titanic film classic Ikiru. The score and the use of an old folk song both create a sense of holy tension, anticipating the transition out of life. The final score is Ludwig Goransson’s score for Oppenheimer, which will probably win the Oscar – and it may well deserve it.
