The soundtrack for “The Twilight Saga: New Moon Soundtrack,” has leaked this weekend more than a week before release (October 20).
Will this mean the indie-rock-centric, Pitchfork-approved disc will get bumped up in it’s release? Four of the bands that sold their soul to join up with this creatively bankrupt tween vampire melodrama are below and man, the music in this movie seemingly will have no cohesion whatsoever. Almost every track on the album sounds completely different and simply a mixtape of “hip,” indie-minded bands, but the Thom Yorke track simply sounds like an outtake from The Eraser, Bon Iver sounds like Bon Iver and likewise, Muse sound much like themselves.
So how is this going to work in the movie? Will these bands be featured in low-key background scenes, maybe on a radio or at a party sequence or will it all be front and center? Having already hired Alexandre Desplat (“Benjamin Button”) to score the movie it seems doubtful that “New Moon,” director Chris Weitz would eschew his compositions for a pop-heavy movie soundtrack and it’s quite possible most of this music will be used sparingly and subtly (also, you can’t really have dramatic vampire/werewolf fighting sequences to Muse music, can you??). The original “Twilight” soundtrack did gangbusters sales so you can understand why these bands would want to be part of this phenomenon, but it’s really the equivalent of a McDonald’s tie-in in pop culture.
The band’s saving grace is that most of the pop music in “Twilight” was incidental and there was no slo-mo, swelling cheesy scene played out to Radiohead, so this will likely be the case again and no one will be completely embarrassed other than by association. Obviously the notion of what constitutes selling out has evolved and changed over the years so musical affiliation with such a project is not such an eye or earsore. Places like Pitchfork Media and Stereogum write about these soundtracks and the movies with straight faces and not a trace of skepticism, but we’re gonna say it: Fuck Thom Yorke and the lot of you jackasses (especially Yorke who doesn’t need this money in the slightest). This is tainted money you’re getting. Hope you sleep well at night.
