Kthaahthikha
One man, a word-processor, and too much free time.
06 June, 2006
Lantana is not a Hispanic Guitarist
I was bumming-around trying to waste forty minutes in Melbourne central yesterday and I wandered into Dragonfly, the discount music shop where they still stock all those great old albums that shouldn't be so hard to find. I didn't have enough money to buy Isn't Anything, and I'm aprised enough of internet file-sharing and my own vices to have changed my mind about the soundtrack to From Russia With Love, so instead I managed to pick-up the soundtrack to Lantana by Paul Kelly and one of his bands.
Funnily enough, the other major contender for my father's money was also a soundtrack largely composed and performed by Paul Kelly and one of his bands. That guy is inescapable (Australia's Bob Dylan? It's better than Neil Young).
For those who haven't seen Lantana, it's a gorgeous, haunting film about what marriage does to couples, focused around a murder-mystery and set in and around the beautiful Blue Mountains of Western Sydney. The film has that very specific look that so many Australian drama/thrillers set in Sydney have (read - very blue), and so it's appropriate that the soundtrack is very muh of the type common to a lot of Australian drama/thrillers, be they set in Sydney or, as in Wolf Creek's case, Wolfe Creek. This type of film's soundtrack is very minimal and spar, yet also lush, like listening to an old jazz man trying to be Massive Attack but sounding more and more like John Cage no matter how hard he tries. The basic instrumentation is built around a reverberated or prepared piano/keyboard, and there are numerous electronic fills playing about underneath the simple, repeating chord (there are usually only one or two chords in the entire soundtrack), that emerge from time to time to hint at the dangerous undertows of the characters' relationships.
Listening to this, it's hard to imagine that Kelly wasn't influenced by the Necks' stunning soundtrack for The Boys, but because he's Paul Kelly there's a lot of guitar. A single chord on the guitar fills the majority of the disc, swept around by a variety of flourishes, minimal drum themes, sparse bass and surfy guitar. But it works, and it works so very well.
At times it even rocks.
I should point-out, though, that the above song is nothing like the majority of the album.
Funnily enough, the other major contender for my father's money was also a soundtrack largely composed and performed by Paul Kelly and one of his bands. That guy is inescapable (Australia's Bob Dylan? It's better than Neil Young).
For those who haven't seen Lantana, it's a gorgeous, haunting film about what marriage does to couples, focused around a murder-mystery and set in and around the beautiful Blue Mountains of Western Sydney. The film has that very specific look that so many Australian drama/thrillers set in Sydney have (read - very blue), and so it's appropriate that the soundtrack is very muh of the type common to a lot of Australian drama/thrillers, be they set in Sydney or, as in Wolf Creek's case, Wolfe Creek. This type of film's soundtrack is very minimal and spar, yet also lush, like listening to an old jazz man trying to be Massive Attack but sounding more and more like John Cage no matter how hard he tries. The basic instrumentation is built around a reverberated or prepared piano/keyboard, and there are numerous electronic fills playing about underneath the simple, repeating chord (there are usually only one or two chords in the entire soundtrack), that emerge from time to time to hint at the dangerous undertows of the characters' relationships.
Listening to this, it's hard to imagine that Kelly wasn't influenced by the Necks' stunning soundtrack for The Boys, but because he's Paul Kelly there's a lot of guitar. A single chord on the guitar fills the majority of the disc, swept around by a variety of flourishes, minimal drum themes, sparse bass and surfy guitar. But it works, and it works so very well.
At times it even rocks.
I should point-out, though, that the above song is nothing like the majority of the album.
Tom Meade, 10:14 pm
