Disc 33 is...Elizabethtown Soundtrack
Artist: Various
Year of Release: 2005
How I Came To Know It: Once again - I saw the movie and liked the music. I was additionally motivated for this one because I thought I was getting a heretofore unreleased Tom Petty song "It'll All Work Out". Actually, it was just a Tom Petty album I didn't have yet. D'oh!
How It Stacks Up: Of 23 soundtracks this is definitely top half. Not sure where it fits, but it has a lot of good stuff on it, and only a couple of duds.
Rating: 3 stars.
Elizabethtown is the movie that Orlando Bloom did after Lord of the Rings to prove to everyone he wasn't an elf. He plays a young man with a promising career as a shoe designer, who ends up making a bad error and losing his job in disastrous fashion. At about the same time his father dies, and he finds himself having to travel to Elizabethtown, Kentucky to bury his ashes.
While there he meets and falls for Kirsten Dunst, playing a free spirited airline stewardess.
Elizabethtown isn't a great movie, but it is a good one. It does a good job of capturing the angst we feel in our mid-twenties as we struggle with our own burgeoning success, our lack of our burgeoning success and the tension between growing up and not wanting to grow up. It is your "first serious love" movie. I'm a sucker for a good romance, so I liked it.
The soundtrack is good because it forms an integral part of the film. The music is woven throughout, and once again director Cameron Crowe's lifetime love of music is put on display. In fact, the final act features many songs appearing on a "mixed tape" that is made for Bloom by Dunst as he drives across America.
I first bought it for "It'll All Work Out" by Tom Petty, and then discovered this song is actually originally recorded on the 1987 album "Let Me Up I've Had Enough". The version on Elizabethtown is a dressed down and slower production, and I think a lot better. the '87 album would benefit from a similar treatment on all the tracks. But more on that when I roll it.
The Soundtrack also features "Square One". A great Tom Petty song which would feature a year later on his amazing album "Highway Companion" but more on that when I roll it.
Count in Elton John's "My Father's Gun" and this soundtrack has 3 songs on other albums in our collection.
I like this record not just for the good music, and not just for that music's place in the film, but overall the music sets a common tone of yearning that really works all on its own. The only downside are a couple of tracks where Indie music goes wrong (It can do that), but these are maybe 2 or 3 out of 15 tracks.
Listening to this record makes me want to hunt down information on some of the other artists that appear and see if I like their other stuff. I'll start asking around and see if anyone knows anything about Patty Griffin (who sings "Long Ride Home", "Let It Out" by the Hombres and "Same In Any Language" by I Nine. If I have 3 of these songs on other albums already, it is a good sign, right?
Best tracks: It'll All Work Out, Long Ride Home, Let It Out (Let It All Hang Out), Square One, Same in Any Language
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