> Brother (2001) - ***1/2

It seems that I consistently rate his scores at least a half-star higher than you (I have this one at ****). That being said...

> And the album does feel
> like 20 minutes of strong ideas extended to double that length.

That's probably true, and I would say that more or less describes a lot of Hisaishi's non-Ghibli output (especially starting in the 2000s). I generally like the core material enough to be okay with that, but it does tend to keep a **** cap on most of his work for me, even if most of them have at least a couple excellent highlights (usually a main theme suite or concert cue).

> Spirited Away / Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi (2001) - *****

Yes, this is correct.

> Hisaishi’s Spirited Away score was by far his most colorful
> large-scale work to date. You get big moments of fear and terror that
> sometimes recall Jerry Goldsmith’s fantastical scores of the 1980s, but
> those are counterbalanced with plenty of sensitive character moments. You
> get unique moments of chilling tension like Yubaba, which the
> composer kicks off by playing an idea that uses a very high piano note in
> tension with a very low note, as well as the clattering metallic sounds
> serving as a thematic identity for the gold-giving demon No Face (a nice
> intellectual touch). Eastern instruments are saturated over multiple
> passages, vastly more so than what was heard in Princess Mononoke
> four years earlier. It was the composer’s most sophisticated composition
> up until this time, and it rewards repeat listens extremely well.

> I’d argue you can approach the score for Spirited Away in two ways.
> One is to view it as a series of glorious individual episodes - the pomp
> and circumstance of Procession of the Spirits, the bouncing feel of
> It’s Hard Work, the impressive build-up of The Stink God.
> This is perhaps the only way to justify the penultimate score track
> Reprise, which unleashes a new romantic theme that seems to come
> out of nowhere but overwhelms you with its beauty (in the great tradition
> of the new theme in the finale of Porco Rosso and Ashitaka and
> San from Princess Mononoke). The other way is to look at it as
> a delivery vehicle not just for all the solid secondary themes already
> mentioned but also for one of the composer’s most affecting character
> themes, the melody for the lead character Chihiro. Like the girl, the
> theme (infrequently deployed, but used for maximum impact) gets taken
> through a tremendous journey throughout the film, from subdued at the
> start to tentative and then heroic in The Stink God (an all-time
> Hisaishi track) to a state of resolution by the end of the movie.

I second all of this. Its eclecticism and lack of an explicit narrative keeps this one at bay for a lot of folks around here, but if you meet the score on its own terms, it's executed perfectly. And yes, The Stink God (cue and the sequence in the film) is sooooo great.

> Much of what was on Hisaishi’s image album released a few months before
> the film’s theatrical debut reflected what ended up in the film but with a
> few tweaks - the main theme carried by la-la vocals, the melodies from
> Procession of the Gods and It’s Hard Work with lyrics and
> other vocal elements, and a synth demo of the glorious theme from
> Reprise. Sea even sounds pretty close to what we got in the
> film track The Sixth Station. As was the norm with these things,
> some ideas didn’t make it to the film. The unused aching cello melody in
> Solitude intriguingly sounds like the main theme of another fantasy
> film involving lost kids that the composer scored later that year, while
> the obnoxiously chipper I’m Lonely, Lonely sounds too twee even for
> Totoro and was thankfully kept out of the movie.

Thanks, as always for digging into the image album!

> Tom Thumb / Le petit poucet, also sometimes labeled as Little Tom
> Thumb (2001) - ***½

I actually do have this at the same rating, haha. I've been meaning to revisit it though - I only listened to full album once and it was years ago. I had the same basic reaction as you, in that I plucked out some of the major main theme highlights and haven't returned to the rest. *But* those highlights have gotten a lot of airtime from me over the years. I could easily see myself bumping this up a half-star on a full relisten.

Also, I don't think I had realized this was Hisaishi's first non-Japan score!