Music

The movie soundtrack is an odd beast – both necessarily locked into a serious, symbiotic relationship and charged with the responsibility of being totally self-sufficient. Any original music score worth its salt must be more than just an audio illustration of what’s happening on screen–  after all, anyone with composition skills and even a vague visual sense could probably manage a half-decent matching job. Rather, a soundtrack needs to be so dynamic as to propel or even predict a narrative/mood, to be aesthetically empathetic to the nth degree and yet, it must guard against standing out from the movie like a large pair of creatively aggressive bollocks. That’s a tall order.

Radiohead guitarist, composer, dedicated reggae head and owner of a distinctively chiselled jawbone, Jonny Greenwood has long since proven himself up to the task. His debut solo album of 2003 ‘Bodysong’ was an exquisite soundtrack for the movie of the same name by Simon Pummell. Currently, Greenwood is juggling his Radiohead duties with those as composer-in residence with the BBC Concert Orchestra, who perform much of this, his score for the latest movie by Paul Thomas Anderson. Knowing that it centres on a maverick oil man – played by Daniel Day-Lewis – in California at the turn of the twentieth century and explores themes of greed, religious belief, vengeance and redemption is by no means crucial, but it does up the music’s dramatic ante.

‘There Will Be Blood’ plays very much as a sumptuously moody set piece, illustrating Greenwood’s talent for portraying a movie’s emotional scenery, rather than writing to particular themes for its characters and it will thrill anyone who enjoys Olivier Messiaen, Charles Mingus, Arvo Pärt and the gloomier of Poland’s contemporary classical composers. Paired with the recent Cave/Ellis score to ‘The Assassination Of Jesse James…’, it would make someone a great – if somewhat sombre – Christmas gift.