The Twilight Saga - New Moon Soundtrack
By Nick Manteris · 0 Comments · Leave a Comment
The soundtrack for New Moon features more big-name bands than its predecessor and, of the eleven artists that contributed a song for Twilight, Muse is the only group to return. The original Twilight soundtrack is still the current best-selling soundtrack in the United States – selling over three and a half million copies – and it’s surprising that they didn’t ask a few more of the bands from the first compilation to include something on this release. Paramore is the most glaring omission, but the exclusion of a song from Robert Pattinson will surely disappoint his numerous fangirls – and most likely put a dent in sales as well.
Many of the artists featured on New Moon created new songs specifically for this soundtrack. The lead single is “Meet Me on the Equinox” by Death Cab for Cutie and (just like the lead single from the first album, “Decode,”) it’s one of the best tracks on the album. Thom Yorke’s “Hearing Damage” is another…and, technically, Thom Yorke is a returning artist because – even though the song wasn’t included on the soundtrack – Radiohead’s “15 Step” played during the credits from the first movie.
The ratio of good songs to bad is roughly the same as the first soundtrack: slightly more than half of the songs on this compilation are just so-so…including the songs from The Killers, Muse and The Editors. The “New Moon Remix” of Muse’s “I Belong to You” is an improvement over the version on their album, but it’s still nothing special. The three subpar songs that deserve to be singled out are the ones from Hurricane Bells, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and the combined efforts of Bon Iver and St. Vincent. (The latter is to be expected since both of the collaborators are in the category that I like to call “that Pitchfork sound,” though the track from fellow Pitchfork-sounders Grizzly was merely so-so.)
- Score
- 67%
“Satellite Heart” by Anya Marina is a surprisingly good entry from an unknown artist (although it was not as satisfying as discovering Blue Foundation’s “Eyes on Fire”) and she sounds so much like Emily Haines from Metric that there could be unintended bias swaying my opinion. The last forty-seven seconds of OK Go’s “Shooting the Moon” save it from being in the mediocre category and make it the last of the noteworthy tracks. The Twilight Saga: New Moon Soundtrack has several better than average songs, but none of them are good enough to make this a compulsory purchase. Just get the four goods songs or wait for the inevitable Deluxe Edition, which will potentially add some substance.
