Passengers - Thomas Newman |
12/19/16 |
Passengers was provided courtesy of The Krakower Group and Sony Music. Thank you!
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What You Will Hear: Finding Nemo… in space!
Standout Tracks: Awake For 7 Days, Precious Metals, The Sleeping Girl, Space Walk, 50% of Light Speed, Cascade Failure, Zero Gravity, Red Giant, Looking For Wrong, You Brought Me Back Will You Be Humming Along? No themes that I could hear. The album this makes me want to dust off: Finding Nemo (and a little bit of Wall-E) – Thomas Newman Will I come back to it? No. Most of what you’ll hear has been done before. That doesn’t, however, mean that what you’ll hear isn’t worth listening to. If you are relatively new to Thomas Newman’s music, I would highly recommend checking out Passengers. If you have been listening for years, there probably won’t be enough here to keep you from returning to one of his past works instead. The first half of the album is almost indistinguishable from Finding Nemo and Wall-E. The second half picks up the pace and gives us a few new experiences, but nothing melodically fulfilling or experimental enough to hold my interest. Still… no one writes for strings like Newman (See: Spacewalk), and his synth soundscapes are always uplifting in a wonderfully quirky way (See: Red Giant). There are a few great tracks that have made it into our HoF. The rest of the score is soothing with a few fun action cues, but nothing that’s a worth return trip. Overall, Passengers is a beautiful and entertaining listen, but it rarely (if ever) reaches Newman's most mezmerizing heights. With such a wonderful catalog, he must do more to outdo his masterpieces of the past. Not a bad problem for an artist to have, and I’m sure more great works are on the way. |