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At the very best, with the vintage woodwinds, vocals, and synths together in The Odyssey, a touch of Vangelis personality from 1492: Conquest of Paradise is raised in places, but only in choral and ethnic shades and never with any of the tonal magnificence. Göransson succumbs to cheap tactics too frequently, including the technique of an annoyingly sudden stop to the music, as in "Troy" but especially at the very end of the film in "Chasing the Escaping Sun." That conclusion to the story is an excessively tacky way to close the story because it contradicts the fact that a decent resolution was achieved for all the leads. No suspenseful, dissonant crescendo was required because no nasty tentacles are on the horizon. Thematically, the score is only barely functional, the composer's ideas too obscured by their own torment to allow any enunciation to flourish. In fact, some listeners won't even notice a single theme existing in the work until hearing them apart from the movie. Four themes by Göransson are intertwined in The Odyssey, some variants of others while one a natural resolution to another when combined. Despite this intelligence, you can only really observe these connections on the album. A theme for Ithaca generally and Odysseus' memories of it often occupies the aulos for woodwind-like effects, and this is where the Vangelis and 1492: Conquest of Paradise influences are heard. Its primary, three note phrasing repeats through different harmonies, intertwined with Odysseus's own motif at times. It uses the slightly rap-like, bard-inspired background chants at times for the legend overall. Plucky fragments try to consolidate into an actual melody in "Ithaca" before the cue degenerates. The theme persists in the choral lament of "Hades," barely living via hints early in "Loyal to the Future," the latter half of "Sirens," and once again with subtlety in the middle of "Apollo's Island." The idea later earns some momentum with choir and aggressive percussion in "Another Name" and returns to its roots on the sparse woodwinds in "Odysseus." By that latter cue, Odysseus' own theme is inseparable from the one for Ithaca, which makes sense. That motif exists in two parts, the first consisting of repetitive thumping in the bass and the second using a descending line to key but almost never resolving outside of three or so cues. These ideas, and especially the latter, form the score's most obvious positive moment as it is reprised for the payoff with the bow pluck before the brawl fight at the end.

The two facets of the Odysseus theme in The Odyssey each have those prominent moments, but in between them, Göransson loses cohesion. This decision may have been by intention, as the finale suggests that composer wanted for it to structurally complete the Penelope theme. The first part of the theme forms the basis of the quasi-rap in "Zeus's Law," with the subsequent melody recurring several times leading up to the first bow pluck at 1:42 into "Ithaca" but unfinished in deep synth pulses later. Heard early in "Let's Go Home" with both the rhythm and descending line, the theme is barely intact by the end of "Laestrygonians" and suggests early in "Sirens" on synths. A choral pronouncement of the theme in the middle of "Another Name" is nice. It's distorted in its descents at the outset of "Bringing It All" and teases another bow pluck later. Underpinning the light plucking and dialogue during "Welcome Home Stranger" in more dissonant shades, the Odysseus material is intertwined with the Ithaca theme in "Odysseus." It reaches its payoff reprise at 2:37 into "The Trial of the Bow/Vengeance," an instance which is mixed much louder in the film than on album. The Odysseus theme finally concludes the Penelope one in the middle of "Chasing the Escaping Sun" and goes on to close the score under the chanting dialogue. That idea for Penelope employs the aulos and fyell tandem to produce a vaguely hopeful melody struggling to ascend in "Penelope" but dissolving like the Ithaca theme. Some scenes with the character may track in this material additional times, though scenes of Odysseus talking in disguise to Penelope fail to really engage this love theme well. It does finally return wholesale on the same instruments in "Chasing the Escaping Sun." A little more fruitful is the theme for their son, Telemachus, which is hindered early by whining synth slurring, percussion, and vocals for the inept boy. Still, it is constructed from somewhat anticipatory ascending chords and more successfully hopeful than Penelope's theme. After an obnoxious debut in "Telemachus," the theme becomes more engagingly tonal by subtle reference in "Menelaus, Husband of Helen." It then opens "Another Name" with some sense of slight nobility on vocal lines and offers more hope for a moment in the middle of "Chasing the Escaping Sun" as the character takes the throne of Ithaca. The culmination of the score's thematic identities in "Chasing the Escaping Sun" provides some vague sense of satisfaction to the narrative musically, but the journey to get there wasn't explicit enough for the connections to truly succeed.

As expected for this tale, Göransson deviates into a slew of secondary ideas for particular encounters, most of resulting cues distractingly poor. The highly disturbed vocal and synth dissonance in "Calypso/Agamemnon" loses all narrative chance to transition from romance to tragedy. The metallic synth nightmare continues through heinous atonalities in "Cyclops," in which bass synth pulses at the end of the cue are painful. Vague vocal and electric guitar-like coolness in "Menelaus, Husband of Helen" yields to solo male vocals of lamentation for one of the score's more palatable moments. The cyclical, synthetic, alarm-like blaring with male chanting in "Laestrygonians" is ridiculous, though the same solo male lamentations from "Menelaus, Husband of Helen" do help. Quietly wretched is the manipulation of synths and ancient instruments in "Circe," Nolan cranking up the volume to achieve horror where Göransson didn't instill it inherently. Old space-laser sound effects from synths in "Hades" are hilariously awful, especially with the deep bass pulses from Black Panther thrown into the mix. (The male lamentation vocals are less effective against this backdrop.) Finally, the "Calypso" material is reprised in more horrific female vocal dissonance in "7 Years," far harsher than it needed to be for the character's allure. Despite the horrifically loud, dissonant action, most of the music for The Odyssey is remarkably dull. It's an insufferably boring score overall, with very few impressive moments to appreciate on album. The lack of efficacy in context and connection on album shows that Nolan's instructions (and the Zimmer techniques as a byproduct) are fraught with peril. Intolerably long cues sometimes go nowhere for five to ten-minute stretches on an album way too long for its own good. The wet mix of film dialogue in "Zeus's Law," "Welcome Home Stranger," and "Chasing the Escaping Sun" aren't disqualifying, but the thunder and explosion sound effects in "Zeus's Law," "Bringing It All," and end of "The Trial of the Bow/Vengeance" are juvenile. Everything about this score screams for attention, the kind of experimental work that declares itself high art simply because it is different. And yet, the end product doesn't function well in the picture and tells no story on album. The experience does improve in the final cues, and the bow pluck effect for the Odysseus theme is some minor salvation. Don't buy the hype about this overrated music, however, because Nolan addressed the emotional deficiencies of Göransson's work by pushing its volume to obscene levels on screen. Louder is not better, regardless of perceived creativity. Could an orchestra have solved these ills? Maybe, maybe not. But what we got is a strategic disaster. "Run away! Run away!"  *   @Amazon.com: CD or Download

Total Time: 118:15