PRINTER FRIENDLY VIEW
(inverts site colors)

Regardless of your tolerance for the horror film score genre in general, It supplies you with much to consider in its highly developed methods. Even if you are not the type of person to appreciate horror music in all its thrashing, dissonant glory, Wallfisch at least provides you an interesting experience in how he achieves this end. A strong argument can be made that there is gratuitous violence in the music's extreme processing that could have been rendered unnecessary by a more nuanced approach. Some listeners will rightfully claim that during an age when visual effects struggle to continue dazzling viewers when expectations have run so high, the ability of music to terrify suffers from the same temptation by producers and composers to simply add more processing and more layers to a cue in order to supply the same addictive thrill. What at one time soloists with a bassoon or muted trumpet accomplished in the genre decades before is now supplanted by dozens of layers of noise processed to make "music" that sufficiently impresses modern studio executives and tired audiences. If you seek subtlety in the distinctions between character warmth and suspenseful thrills, It will disappoint you, but at least its textures in the suspenseful variations on the character half will prove intriguingly unsettling. A standard orchestra is joined by a small group of young children singing an old English nursery rhyme, though that song is distorted and chopped to bits in the process of the score's creation. Some (sampled?) mature vocal chanting effects late in the work are a bit eye-rolling in their grasping at faint Jerry Goldsmith/The Final Conflict glory. Some listeners may believe a synthetic edge inhabits the outright atonal horror sequences, especially in the cues that offer loudly slashing and pounding metallic percussion effects, but the recording sounds closer to a processing of mostly the symphonic performance shrieks into insufferable combinations of noise. The scenes involving Pennywise's infliction of nightmares (or actual harm) on the children are typically met with a cacophonous wall of sound that sometimes overlays shouted lyrics from the child singers for an experience as unpleasant as any in the history of film music. Occasional "cheap trick" manipulations, as in artificial crescendos with abruptly edited conclusions plague a cue like "Deadlights," and moments like this in It, even with creative strains of mixing around the edges, may strain the patience of most listeners. Such material is truly impossible to "enjoy" apart from context in any normal sense of that word.

The more lyrical, dramatic half of It is, not surprisingly, where Wallfisch prevails, if only in brief interludes. Being that this film's story is one of character bonding and coming of age, not to mention the mystery of the town's legend, it makes sense to hear some development of tonal ideas. The actual melodic structures of these sequences are shy enough to avoid obvious memorability, but their tone is the more important component to their success. A solo piano performed by Wallfisch himself is joined by conventional strings, rhythmic woodwind figures, and harp accents to convey the themes for the town, the dead boy that starts the group on its crusade, and, finally, the bond those children form together. Opening and closing the score is a light waltz on piano in "Every 27 Years" for the legend of the tale, laced in the first cue by children's vocalizations that waft back and forth in the left and right channels. Slightly optimistic woodwind and choral tones, yearning to achieve the warmth of a James Horner character theme, establish false hope in "Paper Boat," and related material is a similarly soft and tonal attraction in "Derry," "Beverly," and "Georgie's Theme." More urgent development of those ideas in "Derry History" and "Return to Neibolt" offer accessible determination and gravity to the music. One nice red herring along this journey is "Georgie Found," which is intentionally non-descript in its avoidance of the character's prior theme. The trio of "Yellow Raincoat," "Blood Oath," and "Kiss" nicely wrap the character development with the score's most heart-warming ensemble moments. Meanwhile, as the film progresses, Wallfisch seems tentative about how to handle Pennywise thematically, ranging from outright carnival manipulation in "Epilogue" to the choral fantasy awe of "Pennywise's Tower." Overall, the score for It is technologically impressive, its mix highly commendable not only for the boisterous explosions of sound during the fright sequences, but for the clarity of the ensemble lines throughout. The harp in particular shines despite all the surrounding chaos. But those explosions of ear-shredding manipulation are truly unlistenable, begging further questions about whether "louder" and "more complex" are really the answer to horror music innovation. The tonal portions could be assembled into quite a solid presentation given that 87 minutes of music were released for the soundtrack, but even here, Wallfisch does not enunciate any of his melodies (with the exception of one striking brass sequence at 0:49 into "He Didn't Stutter Once") with enough clarity for audiences to be able to identify anything suitable as a "franchise theme" for a concept that was ripe for such connections. It's smart music that didn't quite achieve its aim. Cautiously approach its long album with realistic expectations.  ***   @Amazon.com: CD or Download

Total Time: 87:00