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| Balfe |
Argylle: (Lorne Balfe/Various) While the thought of
having filmmaker Matthew Vaughn devise a spin-off of the
Kingsman
franchise may have seemed a good idea to Apple, the resulting
Argylle in early 2024 proved to be a monumental dud. With a
nearly incomprehensible plot, Vaughn's film introduces audiences to a
writer of spy novels who is much further intertwined in the espionage
industry than even she knows. When real-life intelligence agents and
James Bond-like villain organizations take an interest in her writings,
she traverses a perilous path that illuminates her as someone she didn't
even know she was, a key to all sorts of global plots. Expect plenty of
double-crosses, bent-realities, and senseless CGI action. Some reports
speculated that the movie could lose Apple hundreds of millions of
dollars. With so much of the production of
Argylle needlessly
complicated, it's not surprising that the soundtrack situation for the
movie is equally multifaceted. Intriguingly, but not necessarily to the
movie's benefit, Vaughn was supplied the right to the "new" Beatles song
"Now and Then" and chose to adapt it instrumentally into the film. He
also obtained services from Ariana DeBose, Boy George, and Nile Rodgers,
among others, for a pair of new songs to evoke the era of the 1970's for
purposes of spy intrigue. (DeBose appears as a character in the film.)
Tasked with wrapping all this ambition together is coordinator and
producer extraordinaire, Lorne Balfe, who replaces Henry Jackman and
Matthew Margeson as Vaughn's franchise composer of the moment. Balfe
receives co-compositional credit with the above artists for the new
songs, and he was responsible for translating The Beatles material into
functional score cues in ways that listeners may recognize from the
memorable use of John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads" in
Kingsman: The Golden Circle. Along with all that song adaptation
work, Balfe was also tasked with the rest of the score, which references
the songs in part and attempts to straddle the line between parody and
genuine action.
Not surprisingly, the Balfe production machine employs at
least ten additional composers, six orchestrators, and four conductors
for this assignment. Cue attribution is vaguely available for some of
these artists, but given that very few listeners will know exactly what
music was written or adapted by whom within any given cue, they are all
ostensibly ghostwriters. That said, cue by cue credits do indicate that
Balfe wrote the score's original themes, one with some input from
Vaughn, interestingly, and the ghostwriting group functioned again as an
arrangement and filler crew. Some of these assistants appear not to have
any music on the album presentation of the score. The end result for
Argylle, not surprisingly, is music with a strong central core
but wayward execution throughout. There are no outward connections to
the
Kingsman scores, the overarching style more comfortable
between Balfe's own
Terminator Genisys and the action of his
Mission: Impossible entries. The most baffling aspect of this
music is Balfe's seeming indecision about how thoroughly to embrace the
parody element. He comes very close at times to outright humor, as in
"Yellow Shirt," but he never sustains that attitude long enough to yield
a consistently entertaining parody mode. While the key to good parody
music is the act of playing ridiculous situations straight, there has to
be an abundance of snazzy personality to accompany the overblown
elements. Here, we get the overblown aspect but not the sense of high
style, which simply makes parts of this score sound like a pounding,
Remote Control Productions-derivative product that masks its
intelligence with mere overstatement. The same exact issue plagues the
two original songs for
Argylle, "Electric Energy" a highly
annoying disco throwback and the James Bond song-aspiring "Get Up and
Start Again" building to bombastic vocal force in the latter portion
that largely ruins its appeal. On the other hand, some listeners may
appreciate "Get Up and Start Again" as a decent, vintage pop song that
borrows much from the performance inflection and brass structures of
Adele's classic song for
Skyfall.
The tone of Balfe's toil for
Argylle is largely
familiar, a sizable orchestral foundation joined by an array of
synthetic augmentation and post-production mixing techniques that
bolster the score's power and give it the occasional sound of outright
synth augmentation. A choir affords near-fantasy ambience for choice
moments. All of it will be highly familiar to Balfe's enthusiasts,
though there are some notable accents. A ticking clock sounds in "Enjoy
the Ride," warped metal effects are most prominent early in "Spoon Spy,"
and the choir imitates a cat meow in John Powell fashion at 1:01 into
"The Spy Who Scratched Me," where violins even try the same effect. A
saxophone contributes flashes of style in "Double Crosser" and
especially "Careless Whisker" while "Furocious" contains some absolutely
frenetic string chopping and a vuvuzela horn-like effect for the villain
theme. There are three recurring themes in
Argylle, two of which
original and only one totally disconnected from the songs associated
with the movie. All of them receive dedicated suite tracks on the album
release. The driving force of the score is Balfe's main Argylle theme,
which utilizes a primary phrase based on the song "Get Up and Start
Again" and contains unidentified secondary phrasing credited to Vaughn,
possibly in one of its three-note accents. The prominent descending
counterpoint lines against the ascending main melody are very satisfying
in this identity. Extensively developed in glorious, full, power anthem
form in "Argylle's Theme," the idea plays here like a blend of Trevor
Rabin's 1990's action and a heavy influence from
Terminator
Genisys. From the perspective of retro power anthems, this one is a
clear winner. In the score proper, the theme's descending counterpoint
figures are heard early in "Mini Moke Mayhem" before a bubbly,
hyperactive action version of the theme pops at 0:55 with enhanced synth
effects. The idea is lightly expressed by woodwinds later in "Serve the
Same Master," slowly builds momentum on strings in "Argylle in Hong
Kong," uses its soft counterpoint lines to open "This Seat is Taken"
where they left off in "Argylle in Hong Kong," and appears for a quick
moment in the middle of "Enjoy the Ride" while quietly meandering
through "Aiden & Elly."
The main theme continues to dominate the score for
Argylle as it prominently opens "The Spy Who Scratched Me" with
bluster on brass and maintaining a muscular stance from those players
throughout the cue. It is reduced to solo piano at the outset of
"Argylle in the Mirror," nicely ponderous thereafter, and is tortured by
synthy-mixed strings in "Parental Misguidance." The theme is afforded
more heft in the slow string drama of "Do You Think I'm OK," but its
demeanor is a tad overplayed here. The alluring counterpoint lines of
the theme open the long, solely Balfe-credited cue "Alfie," a moment
that develops into an extension of the melodramatic string version of
the main melody. Unfortunately, the cue erupts into another
synthetic-sounding or post-production manipulated brass crescendo with
pounding bass notes at its end. A soft, anthemic rendition of the melody
with rambling electronic keyboards opens "Rachel's Story," and it
emerges with hope in the middle of "Al-Badr Palace," including some
half-hearted Arabian tilt at the end. The idea is carried by
espionage-appropriate trumpets at the start of "Double Crosser," and
this increasingly stylish approach becomes a bit more extroverted and
snazzy from brass layers throughout "Mama's Gotta Go to Work," yielding
an overtly pompous conclusion. The theme supplies a vintage Bond-like
dramatic moment during "Satelite Signals" (the cue is misspelled on the
album), and it's translated into a tender, syrupy variant on strings
early in "You Missed." Balfe continues that same spirit at the start of
"Concluding the Argylle Saga," where a pretty homage to John Barry's
You Only Live Twice influences in the string counterpoint accents
against choir. A seldom-employed harp then carries the descending lines
along with whimsical strings for almost parody usage at this point,
though the cue is undoubtedly lovely. The composer then teases the theme
at the culmination of "Yellow Shirt" in even more near-parody
applications. The use of this theme throughout
Argylle is
admirably spotted, and it produces many of the score's clear highlights,
but there's something missing from its soul. Its anthemic tendencies
don't always mix well with the espionage style implied by the genre and
other parts of the score, so its promise is sometimes unrealized in the
action material, especially as the score progresses. Still, it's among
Balfe's best career themes when it is allowed to flow uninhibited.
The other frequently accessed theme in
Argylle
represents the movie's obligatory organization of villains. This
Division theme is built around rising five-note phrases of twisted
aspiration followed by unceremonious descending pairs. It's somewhat
sinister in an expected fashion and summarized with organ and thumping,
percussive drive in "The Division Theme." This idea supplies menace to
the opening moments of "Mini Moke Mayhem," stewing on brass in between
main theme performances. It provides a false crescendo of suspense early
in "Serve the Same Master" before consolidating into its proper form,
and it interjects with creepiness in the middle of "Aiden & Elly" with
the return of the organ backing. The villains' theme expresses some
confidence with its secondary phrasing in "Spoon Spy," becomes jagged
and extremely aggressive in the staccato movements of "Parental
Misguidance," and returns with subtle organ for a performance early in
the middle of "Rachel's Story," the motif elongated for more dramatic
depth later in the cue. It broods in deep bass layers in the first half
of "Al-Badr Palace" but pounds away at the forefront again with
significant force in "Double Crosser," eventually withdrawing to more a
contemplative mode later. Finally, it slaps you in the face with the
vuvuzela horn-like effect in "Furocious." The last theme in
Argylle is the symphonic adaptation of the "new" Beatles song
"Now and Then," which had been completed with the help of artificial
intelligence and released not long before. Used as the theme for the
lead writer, the melody doesn't really fit well with the rest of the
score, as it comes across as an appendage forced into the picture simply
because it was offered for use. It's heard in only two major cues
represented on album, "Elly's Writing Theme" and "Now and Then (Argylle
Symphony)." Both are oddly dramatically overblown, the brass and choir
way too epic to serve this purpose well. Related sensitivity is explored
on piano in the latter half of "This Seat is Taken," but Balfe never
develops it beyond that. Its presence reinforces the "too many cooks in
the kitchen" feeling that the score for
Argylle generates. The
"Argylle's Theme" arrangement is fabulous as a power anthem, and a few
of that idea's interpolations in the work are equally attractive. These
moments make the whole a solid recommendation. But the rest lacks the
cohesive sense of stylish pizzazz to make it a successful parody score
while also failing to achieve convincing coolness to be taken seriously.
The potential for a roaring five-star score was somehow lost in the
process.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
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| Bias Check: |
For Lorne Balfe reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.9
(in 29 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 2.89
(in 21,833 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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