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FILMTRACKS.COM
PRINTER-FRIENDLY VIEW 
Review of The Menu (Colin Stetson)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... only if you are prepared for atmospherically challenging
music that strives to balance baroque mannerisms, unconventional
rhythmic layering, and delusional choral reverence to class and
insanity.
Avoid it... if you require a careful evolution of each third of this score into its next progression, the pomposity of its early portion just as disconnected from the suspense of the middle as that dissonance is from the choral resolution at the end.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
The Menu: (Colin Stetson) If you're one of those
people who loathes hanging out with foodies and has allergic reactions
to chef-related television shows, then the black comedy of the 2022
film The Menu may not be your perfect dish. The plot proposes
that a famous chef maintains a restaurant on his secluded island, and
generally undesirable people of wealth travel there by boat for evenings
of fine dining. The chef, however, sadly no longer really enjoys the
food or people of this profession and decides to spice things up using
his insane imagination. Guests and staff members pay the price with
their lives, the cultish nature of the whole affair, along with the
absurdity of food obsessions, generating the horror element. Those with
sick minds and no appetite for ostentatious habits of the wealthy will
appreciate all the death in the movie, and most critics fell into that
camp. Shifting from television to the big screen, director Mark Mylod
brought in saxophone expert and budding film score composer Colin
Stetson to handle the scoring duties for The Menu. Without
earning much mainstream recognition, Stetson had been steadily building
his scoring career over the 2010's while also continuing his
collaborations and solo releases related to his unusually broad
saxophone explorations and woodwind performances. While much of his
notable film music has dwelled in the low-budget horror genre, The
Menu afforded him a more dramatic and prestigious assignment, one
that he tackled with an intellectual approach that will remind some
listeners of Michael Nyman's style. Pretentiousness and pomp were
important atmospheres for him to capture in the music, striving to
accentuate the other-worldliness of gluttony and extravagance without
drawing an excess of attention to his music in the picture. A choir is
applied as an almost religious tone of absurd reverence to class and
insanity, especially tuned to the bizarrely ritualistic nature of the
unique dining experience. The resulting musical journey mirrors the
dichotomy between humor and horror, the tone of the music shifting
wildly three times in the work to represent the initial formality in the
first third, the brutal realizations in the middle, and ultimate,
sacrificial cult of death in the final passages.
While later portions of the score for The Menu offer more fluid lines of ambience, the most obvious sequences are defined by the use polyrhythms, the simultaneous combination of contrasting rhythms, to represent the busy kitchen environment. Stetson supplies these ideas via conventional strings and woodwinds to emulate a generally Baroque direction in the performance emphasis, a faux-classical feel appropriate to the pomposity of the attitudes on screen. Harshly plucked pizzicato strings dominate these cues, with a piano in similar duties supplying more metallic anxiety once the mood turns sour. Rather than utilizing synthetics exclusively for the horror element after characters start dying, Stetson relied upon a number of organic elements, some of them selected with the intent of providing some sonic connection to a bustling kitchen environment. Pitched glasses (a water glass array) and rapid metallic hits are accentuated by struck pans and pots also used in atmospheric ways as to not be obvious. A wind synth is employed, but traditional woodwinds and a nyckelharpa Nordic stringed instrument offer the unusual tones, the latter providing aggressively angry, low plucking or chopping. Joining this ensemble are regulars in many Stetson scores, highlighted by the nearly mandatory saxophone and Tibetan bowls. The choral influence becomes stronger as the cult of deadly cuisine really starts to reveal itself, the discord in the lines of singing sometimes emulating the polyphonic aspect of the string rhythms earlier in the work. By the culminating revelation of "The Purifying Flame," however, the harmonies become a bit more accessible, the religious element demanding tonal magnificence or, at the very least, deranged hints of majesty. Generally, however, the feel of The Menu is nervously off-kilter in its baroque applications, the middle passages of pure suspense, as in "The Mess," providing less interesting atmospheric horror punctuated by the piano and low string strikes. Stetson can't resist some electronic manipulation, it seems, in the application of the choral layers as the work progresses. It's clear that he emphasized the demeanor over the thematic structure, whether intentionally or otherwise. While Stetson does apply several themes to the score, none of them is memorable or particularly effective as a connective device, the performance inflection doing all the heavy lifting. There is a main theme that opens and closes the score for The Menu, its initial seven-note phrase quick to define the class of the score. Heard immediately in "All Aboard" on high strings, this idea weaves in and out under rhythmic and choral washes, returning in full form at the end of the cue. The composer doesn't explicitly remind us of this melody until 0:11 into "Take the Evening Air," where it is overtaken by other random lines of action. It recurs more forcefully at 0:06 into "Amuse Bouche (Reprise)" on solo viola, where the theme is repeated in increasingly agitated renditions. This idea has a good interlude sequence of static upwards movements that shine at 2:23 into "All Aboard" and inform the chords thereafter in the cue, but don't expect this material to persist obviously in the rest of the score. Several secondary motifs strive to take hold, but they rarely recur in meaningful ways. An anticipation theme of sorts is developed at 0:40 into "The Boat" on viola, slowly building over the entirety of the cue. A fragment of this idea returns at the climax in the middle of "Amuse Bouche (Reprise)." A theme seeming to represent the Hawthorne restaurant is vaguely explored in the middle of "Welcome to Hawthorne" but has no impact later on. A defocused theme for delusion accompanies the choral layering starting with religious meandering in "A Revolution in Cuisine." A cathartic, five-note melody on high choir at 1:55 in "Fallen Angel" is a consolidation of these wayward lines. After this material becomes tonally sublime in "The First Cheeseburger You Ever Ate," the formal five-note melody returns late in "The Purifying Flame." Don't expect to exit your The Menu listening experience with any of these thematic elements in mind. Rather, the striking polyrhythms of the pretentious portions and the disturbed religious vocals of the late horror will define this score for you. None of this material is meant to be overly pleasant, the rhythmic layers intentionally discordant and the tonality of the choral portions really only redemptively soothing in "The First Cheeseburger You Ever Ate." The score functions adequately for the narrative because its awkward personality matches that of the film, but from a structural standpoint, the thematic core could have experienced a more obvious and satisfying arc within the parameters of these techniques. The 42-minute album shifts without much transition between its three disparate subsections, leaving you hungry for something a little simpler than what's on the menu. Such was likely the point. ***
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 42:28
NOTES & QUOTES:
There exists no official packaging for the score album.
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