CD Odyssey Disc 402: Soundtrack

Today was International Towel Day, a day that people around the globe wear a towel out in public in honour of Hitchhiker’s Guide To the Galaxy author Douglas Adams.

At least that’s the idea – I was the only towel-wearer out there today, although my co-worker’s boyfriend reportedly also took part.  Congratulations to you, Dave!  If the Vogons had vapourized earth today, you and I would have been the only survivors.

Instead, while enduring some 'is he crazy?' looks from passersby, I was mostly ignored by the mostly harmless inhabitants of this big mostly blue and green ball we all call home.

Disc 402 is…TransAmerica Soundtrack

Artist: Various Artists

Year of Release: 2006

What’s Up With The Cover?:  The usual movie soundtrack cover – a take on the movie poster.  Here we have the two main characters in front of their car.  Up ahead is a sign indicating a fork in the road.  Life often features those.

How I Came To Know It: The usual movie soundtrack way – I saw the movie and liked the music.  Mostly I was excited during the credits when I heard the song “Like A Rose” and recognized it as a previously unheard track by Lucinda Williams.  At that time I didn’t have her self-titled debut, and so didn’t have that song.  Sheila came through shortly thereafter, getting me the soundtrack for my birthday.

How It Stacks Up:  I have around twenty four soundtracks, maybe more depending on how you count them.  TransAmerica is a good enough record, but not one of my favourites.  I’d put it in the bottom third of those, but certainly not the worst.

Rating: 3 stars

Life is a journey.  Bring an open mind.

That’s the tag line for “TransAmerica” the movie, and a theme well developed in the film.  The movie is about a woman, born a man and going through the final stages of gender re-assignment surgery.  Before her therapist will sign the final papers though, she requires her to travel across the country to New York and meet the son she ‘fathered’ in her youth.

From there the movie is a heartwarming road movie, that challenges its main character (played brilliantly by Felicity Huffman) to open herself up to human relationships and get to know herself a bit better.  At the same time challenges its audience to open our minds and learn to love one another.  For a species that has been socialized for so long, I still shake my head that we still miss that simple target so often.

The music is a good match for the movie, mostly featuring old style country tunes with a strong spiritual bent.  These songs are tender songs about loving your neighbor and speaking personally to God.  The movie is a very quiet, character driven film and more raucous music would have drowned it out.  I’m glad they went the way they did.

That said, separated from the film, I find that style of music very hit and miss.  “Fish Song” by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band was an out of place novelty track, and “Beautiful Dreamer” might be a traditional mainstay, but I found it making me yawn, not dream.  Apologies on this front to actor Graham Greene, who sings a beautiful a capella version of this for the film.  Greene does great for a character wooing Huffman, and I admire the heart he puts into it, but it isn’t professional quality without the context of the movie scene.

On the plus side, I don’t know who the Old Crow Medicine Show is, but their two songs on this record are two of my favourites.  “Take ‘Em Away” is an up-tempo harmony driven song about being poor and proud, but not so proud that you aren’t willing to ask for some help from the man upstairs once in a while.  It is a song that puts a spring in your step and makes you want to sing along, even if you’re not religious.

Their other track couldn’t be more different.  “We’re All In This Thing Together” is a slow and mournful tune that is up there with the Youngbloods 1967 hit “Get Together” as one of the most affecting songs about how we all have to help each other along.  The chorus sums it all up – film and otherwise:

“We’re all in this thing together

Walkin’ the line between faith and fear.”

Of course, the greatest track is Lucinda Williams’ “Like A Rose” – a song that is originally just a simple, heartfelt lovesong that takes on all kinds of extra dimension when applied to a woman trying to get her outside in line with her insides, and shedding all of the shame and painful isolation associated with that hard journey.  This is a song that is every bit as powerful without the film as with it.  I love that Williams has re-recorded it, and chosen a production that is intimate, just a guitar and her singing, smoothing all the roughness out of the edges of her voice.  It ends:

“If it’s love you want

Hold out your arms

It’s alright here, it’s safe and warm

It’s OK to feel good

That’s the way it should be

Everything we have is fresh and new

I will open myself up to you

Like a rose.

Like a rose.”

While this could have ended this record perfectly, Dolly Parton’s Oscar Nominated “Travelin’ Thru” gets that honour – a song that lost out to the rap song “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp.”  It’s Hard Out Here For a Pimp” is a pretty good song, but like Felicity Huffman (who lost to Reece Witherspoon), the Oscar should’ve gone to Parton that year.

Successfully following up on Lucinda Williams is no mean feat, but Parton exceeds my expectations and makes it happen.  “Travelin’ Thru” is another song on this soundtrack about muddling your way through the world.  Not everyone has the challenges of Felicity Huffman’s character in “TransAmerica” but everyone has challenges, and if you haven’t felt a little alienated along the way, then you haven’t lived an examined life.

Parton captures this struggle but in her inimitable way, she does it with an upbeat trill that tells you everything is going to be OK.  “Like A Rose” would’ve served as a fair ending, but Parton’s hopefulness is the right way to end the film, and the right way to end the album as well.  A few lines from it are the right way to end this review:

“God made me for a reason and nothing is in vain

Redemption comes in many shapes with many kinds of pain

Oh sweet Jesus if you're listening, keep me ever close to you

As I'm stumblin', tumblin', wonderin', as I'm travelin' thru”

I don’t agree that everything happens for a reason, but Parton’s conviction on this track makes me want to, and that’s enough sometimes.

Best tracks: Take ‘Em Away and We’re All In This Together both by the Old Crow Medicine Show, Lost In The Lonesome Pines – Clinch Mountain Boys, Like A Rose by Lucinda Williams, and Travelin’ Thru by Dolly Parton.