Reviews: That Bloody Juno Soundtrack

And so in an effort to bring you my thoughts on the hottest and unknown music, here's a review of a soundtrack that’s number #1 in the US for a film that has made around $100 million already and is currently being advertised very, very, very heavily here in the UK. Yep, it’s the effing Juno soundtrack! Now, I've not actually seen the film (it isn't released here until the end of the week and I don't have the internet connection to download it) but that can only be a good thing (n terms of objective reviewing as it means I'm judging this album as a collection of songs, without tying it to my opinion of the film itself - although I did decide it was the Greatest Thing Ever when I heard Ellen Page was in it. So, as an album and collection of songs, how does the Juno Soundtrack CD/Illegal Download sound? Well….meh. For one thing, this thing is quite confusingly ordered, to the extent they seem haphazardly organised, ending up with both versions of “Anyone Else But You” divided only by one track (and it’s a short track at that). There is not any real difference between these two versions to stop you thinking “Wait, didn’t I just hear this?”, at least on the first listen. Similar things happen as well, with tracks that don’t really work together being put next to each other and the odd Kimya Dawson skits just being thrown in where-ever. There doesn’t actually seem to be any real reason why the songs are in the order they are, unless it’s the order to which they appear in the film, which is a crappy reason. Maybe it seems like a minor complaint, but it really just feels so random and harms your (or at least my) enjoyment of the soundtrack as an album. So, leaving aside the random order they’re arranged in, just how are the songs on here? Well, they’re all quite sweet and well-natured slices of fey chamber folk. It even includes The Velvet Underground’s “I’m Sticking With You” which, with its simple piano chords and harmony vocals, is the most un-Velvet Underground-y song you can imagine. It’s all very slow, very patient, very sugary and slight off-base. This can be a little grating, as you start to wish for a bit of aggression to turn up and spice things up a little. The closest to this desired aggression the album delivers is on “Loose Lips” by Kimya Dawson, where the line “Fuck Bush and fuck this war” would stand out immediately, if not delivered in that dreamily, focussing-on-something-out-of-eye-corner common to most anti-folk. I’m not a big fan of this type of music, but there’s enough difference between the different artists on here to make sure I don’t go running out to buy some incredibly noise rock to play at immersive volumes. As I’ve said, the general quirkiness of most of the tracks gets a little grating but they’ve squeezed just enough songs that buck that trend - The Kink’s “Well Respected Man” and Cat Power’s “Sea of Love” stand out as examples. So, as an over-all listening experience, the Juno Soundtrack album doesn’t stand up too impressively, mainly because none of the tracks really sound too different to any of the others. Also, it is far too twee overall, to the point where some listeners will probably find it irritating (I know I was near that point upon first listen), but at least the album maintains a relatively consistent tone. But, it isn’t really supposed to be looked on as a cohesive album, now is it? Instead it is more like a mixtape made by a very sensitive person who is on five different types of allergy medication and still wears a scarf in July. And on that ground, I can do nothing but recommend the Juno soundtrack – unless you really, really, really hate Bell and Sebastian. (Any mistakes in content, spelling or HTML will not be fixed because I simply do not care. Failure to send nice replies will result in me tearing up more than your average American Idol audtionee)