‘This isn’t really death,’ Tyler says. ‘We’ll be legend. We won’t grow old.’
I tongue the barrel into my cheek and say, Tyler, you’re thinking of vampires.

I’m not even going to bother with an album review. You know what’s on this. Of the three, the greatest on-the-whole success. I don’t like every single track, but there are fewer obvious bombs, and the Vampire Weekend cut is very, very good. Frustratingly good. What frightens me about this soundtrack is I would have loved the shit out of it when I was in high school. Just think, the guy who gave me his copy of the NBK soundtrack could have given me this.

Oh, that hurt. God, my brain.

try: 10, 14, 7, 2
no FCCs

1. wall of sound start, easy midtempo. u2-style female-voxed pop. sky-high vocals and shoegaze guitar in the chorus. a bit like rockier lush. (it’s metric, of course.)
*2. starts with broadway-style male solo vocals and backing piano. drums and guitar kick in, then: fast galloping rudder guitar a la knights of cydonia. huge showstopping choruses, whaling piano chords, lightning-fast guitar runs. did they write this for guitar hero or what? absurd lyrics, over-the-top vocals. it is UNREAL how much these guys sound like queen. ends with :37 of loungy solo piano and winding ‘ooh’ vox.
3. who do you think you are, the killers? summery feel-good stadium-sized synth-assisted guitar rock. fast, happy, clangy. singer has that bizarre style that sounds like trying to yawn and sing at the same time. kinda like muting a trumpet. kids drink wine coolers on the beach to this. “let’s stay up until the sky bleeds red”? i don’t know, man. mom’ll kill me if i’m not home in time for the apocalypse.
4. downtempo. big bass drum and dramatic vocals. sounds like low-rent fiona apple. chorus goes for serious/intense, but just sounds silly and repetitive.
5. slow ambient plinky piano + some violin. no drums. really pretty minor melody, forceful female vox. reminds me superficially of both the romeo + juliet theme and the enya crap populating the lord of the rings elf scenes.
6. uke! handclaps! uptempo, syncopated porch-stomp folk with a curious beat and melody cadence. some “ooh” action. sounds a lot like princeton.
*7. black keys! starts w/heavy drum lead-in. little ditty about a NOLA girl who likes fresh starts. blues electric guitar. tambourine and spare, hard-hitting drums. as always for these guys, lo-fi-style vocals. solid.
8. ~3 sec countoff. slow, insidious, sidewindy western. twang bass and doubled bells line over spursy tambourine. how’s about we settle this with a duel? in the desert? think we can get a clocktower in the background?
9. apparently the single. i mean, it’s okay. lots of lushly layered, echo-back ambient vox. padded drum machine and subdued electroclash elements. beck sings backup, but you can’t even make out his voice.
*10. bad news for you vampire weekend h8ers. this song kills it. feather-light high-pitched 12-string rudder guitar (listening to ‘lives in the balance’ much, kids?). chilling shoegazey bells/gong/violin quick-chord-change chorus. why oh why does this song remind me of ‘the last of the brooding miserables’?
11. upbeat charger. driving, but not hard, beat. slight tribal feel (there are some hilarious war whoops in there). a little on the psych side. fuzzy airy/ambient vocals. sounds like animal collective meets malachai.
12. downtempo. lone low brooding bass, then garage guitar. sounds like soundgarden. the stuff that plays when cowboys walk in slo-mo. but... why play this when you can play the black keys?
13. slowish, brightly strummed guitar. sleepy, melty feel. very easy, sway-inducing, super-creamy ‘aah’s and ‘la’s. incredibly spare (and kinda dumb) lyrics: “life on earth is changing / life on earth is ending”... yep, that’s about it.
*14. cheerful whistling intro & outro. train track acoustic country/folk and a pick-it-up vocal cadence not totally unlike pre-sellout kings of leon. oh, those assholes.
15. it’s the friggin score. slow piano. it’s, you know, pretty. what did you expect?