“Roslyn”
from the soundtrack The Twilight Saga: New Moon
2009
iTunes
On a good day, film soundtracks enhance the moviegoing experience. At their best, they transcend it. The latest sonic accompaniment to Twilight‘s inescapable teen-vampire juggernaut — a swooning conveyance of girl-meets-undead-boy romance, delivered by some of the best established and emerging names in the indie stratosphere — may sway even the most committed Twi-loathers.
After the success of the first installment, music supervisor Alexandra Patsavas (Gossip Girl, Grey’s Anatomy) gets her pick of the alt litter here, with each contributing original, previously unreleased material: From the opening chords of Death Cab for Cutie‘s dusky guitar rapture “Meet Me on the Equinox” to the spooky robot-ennui of Thom Yorke‘s “Hearing Damage” and Grizzly Bear‘s gorgeous folk-pop pastoral “Slow Life,” New Moon rarely falters. A peacocking remix of Muse‘s shamelessly operatic “I Belong to You” becomes a Bowie-esque glam-rock stomper. In its wake, Bon Iver and St. Vincent quietly unfurl “Rosyln,” a duet of hushed, almost church-like beauty.
New Moon yields several happy revelations from its lower-marquee names: Nordic songstress Lykke Li‘s nearly a cappella “Possibility” is a lovely little Swedish snowflake, and jokey rockers OK Go achieve an impressive sort of Flaming Lips-y quirk-gravitas on the sprawling, cinematic “Shooting the Moon.” Black Rebel Motorcycle Club‘s acoustic campfire lament “Done All Wrong” segues seamlessly into the jaunty, Strokes-ian guitar fuzz of Hurricane Bells’ “Monsters.” Think of New Moon as a sort of survey course in new-now-next rock: a mixtape with teeth.