ONE FROM THE HEART

CLASSIC SOUNDTRACK

FRESH SPINS

Two gems to improve your moodle…

THE BOY AND THE HERON

★★★★★

Melancholy and minimalism are the key notes of Joe Hisaishi’s Studio Ghibli return. Gentle piano notes dominate on Ask Me Why, setting the score’s querulous tone. Cues such as Farewell and Memories are careful wonders, soft and inquisitive, any embellishments of strings and horns administered with pinpoint precision. As grander elements are added, Hisaishi builds steadily towards a sense of sweetly sorrowed finality with The Last Smile, its grace notes subtly, surely earned.

WONKA

★★★★★

After contributions to Doctor Who, LOLA and more, Neil Hannon brings winning reserves of wit and whimsy to Willy. AHatful of Dreams makes exposition extravagant, while Sweet Tooth high-kicks off with showtune exuberance. Best of all, For a Moment and AWorld of Your Own render uplift and poignancy with ease. Timothée Chalamet’s effortless vocals and Joby Talbot’s twinkly score also charm, adding dustings of pure delight to Hannon’s sweet, warm songs.

Tom Waits was caught between stations in the early 80s. After his early beatnik balladeering, he was searching for new sounds, not yet in his junkyard-jazz phase. He veered between LA and New York, unsettled. So it fits that he would gravitate towards a Vegas of the mind, poised between reality and fantasy, as he worked on the soundtrack for Francis Ford Coppola’s between-states – in/out of love - musical.

The 1982 film flopped, infamously, but Waits’ music is a twinkling diamond in the wreckage. With country singer Crystal Gayle’s limpid voice a perfect counterpoint to Waits’ full-grain rasp’n’croon, One from the Heart is a liminal beauty, one part steam-off-the-sidewalk longing to two parts timeless showtunes.

Hired after Coppola heard his Bette Midler duet I Never Talk to Strangers, Waits spent nearly two years honing the songs in his smoke-wreathed American Zoetrope office. He was in Tin Pan Alley mode, a writer for hire. But his imprint rings out from the Opening Montage, a trio of tunes evoking his earlier Tom Traubert’s Blues on Broadway.

Once Upon a Town establishes a merger of fairy tale and location, while The Wages of Love’s cracked swing brings together romance/gambling motifs. Through the smoky horns, Gayle’s voice crystallises for the sublimely forlorn Is There Any Way out of This Dream?, where even Teddy Edwards’ sax sounds desolate. Picking up after You finds Gayle/Waits parrying put-downs wittily, while Jack Sheldon’s trumpet sulks in support.

Sung by Gayle, Old Boyfriends is one of Waits’ grandest weepers, its soft bass and melting guitar backing a deep-blue valentine to lost squeezes. Broken Bicycles foregrounds Waits’ fetish for damaged objects, invested with worlds of feeling over a wonky piano. I Beg Your Pardon is a scarecrowblues apologia, Little Boy Blue a jazzy frolic. The Tango and Circus Girl preempt Waits’ later experiments in woodwind wheeze, before the aching This One’s from the Heart and purely beautiful Take Me Home uphold Waits’ peerless ability to turn bruised sentiment into something sublime.

The songs banked Waits an Oscar nom; he lost to Henry Mancini and Leslie Bricusse’s Victor/Victoria. No shame in that, and nor is the loss any shade on Waits’ intoxicating toasts to sloshed yearning and moon-eyed melancholy. Notably, too, Waits met future wife/collaborator/saviour Kathleen Brennan on the job, imbuing the record with extra romance for long-haul Waits-watchers. The result is an exquisite act of excavation: from uncertainty and flawed ambition, Waits sourced scuffed romantic gold.