REVIEW: Shudder To Think, First Love, Last Rites (Epic)
- Chelsea Spear
1998 has been the year of the soundtrack for Shudder to Think. While their dramatic sound might not seem conducive to laying back and helping to develop a scene, their music has provided an eloquent sonic backdrop for some of the most effective and moving scenes in Lisa Cholodenko's examination of the art scene and the role drugs play within it in her moving debut film High Art. Another first-time director, former Lemonhead and video mastermind Jesse Peretz, tapped the Think to provide the music for his adaptation of Ian McEwen's First Love, Last Rites.
Soundtracks requires a normally dramatic band such as Shudder to Think to pull back their grandest flourishes and most drama-queen-ish tendencies to help someone else with their vision. While StT's main stock is found in the high drama of their theatrical live shows and dynamic, crescending power ballads, the band once again puts forth an admirable subtlety.
Unlike their work on High Art, the concept of the First Love soundtrack allows the Think to use some of the more winsome and effective tricks in their bag. According to the press release, the band and director Peretz conceived of the soundtrack as an all-night oldies radio station playing in the arid apartments and back kitchens that comprise the movie's locations. The soundtrack reveals a host of new tunes by the StT braintrust, their mournful melodies inflenced by the songcraft of 1960s tunes found on old Stax sides or within the walls of the Brill Building. The band's heightened senses mesh well within such styles.
The band also bonds well with their guest vocalists, and the vocalists are likewise well matched with their material. In his last recorded performance, Jeff Buckley's voice soars and induces goosebumps on the doo-wop opening track "I Want Someone Badly", and Liz Phair's limited range and lived-in voice works well within the glammy "Erecting A Movie Star". Acharacteristic punk raveup "When I Was Born, I Was Bored" is aided by Billy Corgan's pouting delivery, and even a hype-ruined singer like Nina Persson of the Cardigans, whose previous output suggested a cross between Andrea True Connection and the worst possible traits of Astrud Gilberto, acquits herself hauntingly on "Appalaichan Lullabye". The only missteps occur when regular Shudder to Think vocalist Craig Wedren steps up to the microphone; within the stylistic limitations of the songs on the album, his unflappable air comes filtered through a dreadful accent and arid white-trash personality that suggests what Cheez Wiz-era mid-period Elvis Presley might have sounded like had he been born in the body of Satanic Church high priest and part-time musician Anton Szandor LaVey. One wishes that Wedren would have chosen a better vocal role model for these tracks, like, say, All This Useless Beauty-era Elvis Costello, though his mocking treatment of his vocals on "Just Really Wanna See You" makes for a delicious coda to his previous musical torture.
All in all, the soundtrack is a worthwhile soundtrack, especially to fans of the band and the individual vocalist. After hearing a band that's so resolutely itself on their other albums hide under others' manses for these two soundtracks, I'm very curious to hear the Think's contributions to the forthcoming soundtrack for Velvet Goldmine, Todd (_Safe) Haynes' tribute to the glam rock of David Bowie, Iggy Pop, and the like. Since the dramatic approach of such bands is much closer to StT's music than much of their present work, I can only imagine that this experiment in glitter rock will find the trio sounding like themselves in spades.
