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Within just a matter of days from when Eastwood first approached Sutton and Jacob about Sully, the band had adapted Eastwood's main theme and written two more of their own. The director largely handed the score off to Jacob, who wrote and orchestrated the bulk of the music. Meanwhile, Sutton, in part, wrote lyrics and arranged her vocalized portions of the score. The jazz band (piano, bass, drums) handled the majority of the performances, but some overlays of a relatively full orchestra at the direction of Conrad Pope were included for only a small handful of cues. Within a relatively smooth month of work, the recording sessions were done. The result? A Tierney Sutton Band album trying to function like a film score. One thing that Eastwood nailed to perfection with this score is its general demeanor; the application of solemn but sophisticated jazz is a service to the titular character and New York. Just as the topic at hand is comforting to the soul, so is the score during its scenes of conversation and reflection. It's a carefree, elegant score for a world that still believes in the everyday hero, and that affirmation earns this score a three-star rating by itself. On the other hand, you can tell that Jacob, Sutton, and Eastwood are novices at film score composition. There is practically no nuance in this work, no instrumental creativity, no counterpoint, no conflict of themes. It's extremely simplistic, and while that services the character portions of the film with ease, the crash and simulation scenes are badly underplayed. There was tremendous opportunity for a composer to take the music for the initial crash and subsequent simulations and play with motifs or instrumentation to suggest parity (or lack thereof) in the two circumstances. Instead, there is a mediocre attempt to use percussive rhythms and slight dissonance to address the scenes of suspense in this film, and that's simply not enough in today's cinematic world. Likewise, the layering of vocals by Sutton is sometimes distractingly forward in the mix when they needed to be further back. In fact, there are moments, as in "F4 Malfunction" and "Rescue" when you receive an annoying Titanic/Sissel Kyrkjebø vibe from the vocals. Ultimately, you encounter the best this score has to offer in the lengthy "Sully Suite" at the outset of the album, including most of the orchestral backing, which, at times, emulates early 1970's John Williams wholesomeness. Otherwise, the score is innocuous but vacuous. It would have been a perfect assignment for Jerry Goldsmith, who could have drawn clever connections between the flight and simulation scenes and separately developed the jazz with greater narrative manipulation. As it stands, the music for Sully pleasantly glides by without much excitement or casualty.  ***   @Amazon.com: CD or Download

Total Time: 51:21