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Because Romulus spends much of the first half of the film in the lonely madness of his cave, Blanchard's score for this majority of time is consumed by the eerie, percussive sound effects of banging trash cans, primal calls, and the usual synthesized groans of introverted reflection. Even when the classical piano music begins appearing through the clouds, the pace and tone of their performances is rough and undisciplined. The piano solos by Blanchard and Awadagin Pratt are jumpy and far less eloquent than those of, for instance, Patrick Doyle's East-West or Joel McNeely's Lover's Prayer from the previous year. Nevertheless, the sheer volume and speed of their duets is an impressive feat; as the album comes to a close, they pick up a significant amount of momentum towards their fully symphonic accompaniment. And yet, the unquestionably disturbed mental condition of Rom is never quite shaken in the music. From start to end, the listening experience on album is unsettling in its turbulent rhythms. Critics of the film stated that it fails because of its lack of focus and tendency to wander off into bizarre visions of madness (mirrored by the sound effect in the middle of "Now"). To his credit, Blanchard scores the film with equal ferocity, and this close reflection of the character's evolution is what makes the album for The Caveman's Valentine a very difficult listening experience. The first half of the product is a wasteland of paranoid delusions, and the maturing piano performances of the second half only feature one or two harmonically enjoyable moments. The primary theme that emerges in "Caveman Outside the Cave" and reappears in "The Letter" and "Now" is a symphonic marvel, but its performances are far too short to save the album as a whole. The same applies to the sparingly employed solemn acoustic guitar performances that attempt to add warmth to the equation. The album is, however, presented well. In the middle of over an hour of original music, you hear a featured opera performance from the film. The Northwest Sinfonia, which often showed a lack of size and experience in many score recordings at the time, performs with a superior level of intensity for The Caveman's Valentine, perhaps inspired by the role for the piano performances by Blanchard and Pratt. To get to the meat of the album, however, you have to jump to the final ten tracks (when Rom begins to join the real world once again). Unfortunately, Blanchard did so well in portraying the turbulence in Rom's mind that the score's overall character on the album is dramatically forbidding and depressing.  ***   @Amazon.com: CD or Download

Total Time: 61:22