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Disney | iTunes.com |
The illustrious composer’s
broad-shouldered return to dashing jazz pops with panache
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In my Superlative Albums I Wrote About in 2018 list, this album was awarded the Cardinal Cardioid for Reddest
In my Superlative Albums I Wrote About in 2018 list, this album was awarded the Cardinal Cardioid for Reddest
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The wait is over.
With a splash of vibrant crimson and a surge of burnished brass, The Incredibles 2 has finally smashed into the screen, a film fourteen years in the making, and worth every moment. (The movie’s actual title omits the article, but that makes it sound weird, and we like to play fast and loose here at the Ramble. Don’t @ me.) It was with confidence that I corralled some mates to experience Disney-Pixar’s latest — the corporate monolith’s track record of rare sequels is spotless — and that very week we found ourselves surrounded by the crunching of extortionate popcorns and the chattering of excited children, fidgeting in anticipation for a film we had been waiting for since literally before they were born.
All our faves are back for more strength and stretch, more speed and shield; a tale of family, friendship and fashion told with flair and finesse. And reprising his role behind the baton is the illustrious Michael Giacchino, who is just so hot right now. His shiny new soundtrack proudly barrels in, square of chin and broad of shoulder, in striking contrast to the more relaxed, fluid structure of the original which prefers to nimbly leap from idea to idea.
If you ask me (which, since you’ve clicked on my blog, you have) I prefer the flexibility, the unpredictability (see above) if only in general rather than in specific. The legendary John Williams, of Star Wars and of so many others, is the master of this particular stratagem, wielding his orchestra like a neoclassical weapon. It is he who composed the greatest film soundtrack of all time, which took out the gold in my Top Ten Albums I Wrote About in 2017. It is he who conjured both magic and terror in The Empire Strike Back. He didn’t drop the ball for the prequels either, even if whomever was saddled with the burden of editing the music had no choice but to shuffle it into a copy-pasted patchwork. And hey, Williams is super old and dusty now, but his work on the sequel trilogy is certainly nothing to sneeze at.
Dropping the needle on Giacchino’s most recent oeuvre, the first thing that springs to mind is how extraordinarily very good it sounds. A thin film of patina has settled on the original soundtrack since its release lifetimes ago in 2004, and for lack of a better word this new one really pops: clear, sharp and warmly defined. The composer’s boisterous approach to jazz manifests itself in technicolour columns, in pleasing parallels and perpendiculars. While the woodwinds trill and flourish across the staves, Giacchino’s strings are a little silvery for my taste. But seeing as they’re largely relegated to a supporting role behind the brass, it makes hardly a lick of difference.
For a good meaty string experience, I point you in the direction of the original Star Wars trilogy. Williams’ acrobatic conducting really holds up through the decades. If only whoever produced his later repertoire hadn’t banished him to the depths of a towering, echoing cavern. The London Symphony Orchestra is forced to swell just to fill the space, with results cold and impersonal. The earlier soundtracks, as well as Giacchino’s Incredibles repertoire, are so immediate, so tactile, close enough to reach out and grab.
It’s rare to find a film composer who throws themself at the task with such unrestrained zeal. There’s no shortage of passionless, dry, faux-classical bluster out there. That’s the easiest thing in the world to scribble out. What’s not so easy is to go completely overboard into irreverent convulsions of joy, as John Powell (How to Train Your Dragon, How to Train Your Dragon 2) did with his bombastic work on Solo. Giacchino really indulges himself with broad, articulate melodies, as Williams continues to do. The two are kindred spirits. They share that elusive quality of heart.
It’s been a while since such a splendid earworm stormed the box office, and boy has that cochineal burrowed in deep. Consider that the most lucrative franchise in existence, the hulking behemoth of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, continues to rake in unfathomable quantities of cash — but can you hum a single tune from any of its twenty-plus movies? Off the top of your head, you can certainly recall the stirring main theme from Star Wars, as well as the pompous Imperial march, the mystical Force theme and the determined Rebellion fanfare. You’d probably recognise Han and Leia’s sweeping refrain, and you’d definitely perk up at Darth Maul’s melodramatic chorale. This is all to say nothing of various and sundry numbers from Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, Jaws and a dozen others. Name a retro blockbuster. Williams scored it.
Full disclosure: my high school’s orchestra performed the theme from The Incredibles as a staple of its repertoire. I have heard it dozens of times, and it is stamped permanently into the folds of my brain.
From one sense to another, it can’t be overstated how incredibly gorgeous The Incredibles 2 is. Hats off to director Brad Bird and his singular sense of style (as avatised in that striking pentatych), not to mention his show-stealing performance as the diminutive diva Edna Mode. It never ceases to blow me away how far animation technology has come, just in my lifetime. The fire and water, the ice and lightning, it’s all realer than real. Not only explosions and oceans, frosts and bolts, but smaller details — how everyone’s hair ruffles just right, how Bob’s wet shirt wrinkles just so. The further back in time you go, the more apparent the stopgaps, the shorter draw distances, the strings jerking, the hydraulics shrieking. And now we’ve progressed to actual physical comedy: an overloaded artist struggling to carry armloads of blueprints, a superpowered baby wreaking havoc on a dastardly raccoon. (Speaking of havoc and the wreaking thereof, I forget if there’s a word for that crazy wibbly thing the brass does when provoked. I’m just going to go ahead and call it megavibrato.)
There’s nothing here quite as luscious as ‘Off to Work’, the twenty-four-carat elevator music that plays while Mirage tours Mr Incredible around the lavish island base. That stylish samba embellished with decadent harp glissandi and shimmering curtains of string is a standout from the original. But what the sequel soundtrack lacks in specificity it more than makes up for in consistency.
Which is not to say it is free of highlights. Just shy of ten rollercoasting minutes, the jam-packed standout ‘Incredits 2’ almost eclipses the splendid ‘Incredits’ from the original film. While the latter functions as theme and variations, from quasi-industrial gridding to effortless Broadway kitsch, the former sprawls into a definitive suite, topped and tailed with tightened up quotations. If you only have time for one piece from each soundtrack, consider that your recommendation.
And then come the bonus tracks, the after-dinner digestive mints, in the form of three fun jingles. Each is ripped from an imagined sixties television show starring each of the main supers, each a chipper little nugget of vim that frolics within a different jazzy subgenre. A separation is signalled with slightly different production, a little more compressed, a little warmer, a little tighter. Giacchino delights in his cheesy joke without overdoing it. (“Mr Incredible! / Incredible! / Punching the bad guys / Pow, pow, pow!”) Unfortunately, sequenced immediately after are a capella reprises of the same jingles which take the joke just a smidge too far, cannonballing right off the cliff of whimsy into the ocean of eyerolls. I’m well aware that it’s been centuries since it was edgy and cool to make fun of a capella, but it’s been an entire geological era since the novelty of doing the sounds all with the voices wore thin. What I did to Bon Iver’s abstruce sigils and opaque glyphs I did to this soundtrack. Tweak the iTunes metadata so that ‘Incredits 2’ wraps things up more neatly. Lifehacks.
Like the best sequels (just going to squeak a final Star Wars comparison in here with Empire and The Last Jedi), The Incredibles 2 refuses to wallow in the past, taking the original as a jumping-off point to explore new ideas and different directions. Bigger and broader, this film balances an expanded ensemble cast (you get a subplot! and you get a subplot!) with more elaborate setpieces (a cool noir sleuthing scene! a motorcycle chase that is also a train heist! boat!) while still tying everything together smoothly. And as per the legal mandate, the film meets its quota for copious in-jokes directed at everyone who saw the first movie, integrated smoothly enough so as to not mildly infuriate a confused Johnny-come-lately.
Saturated and sanguine, bold and bright, Giacchino’s latest work makes a fine addition for jazz-lovers and jazz-rookies alike.