Although the calendar says January 2025, our monthly score countdown is stuck in April 2024. Lucky for us, this happens to be home for some of the best scores of the year, including Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’s Back to Black and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s Challengers. The latter, of course, being one of the most popular scores of the and the rare score to really break out into the mainstream. It’s also a weird month, having three of the main scores that I cover coming from composing duos (not to mention scores from some more duos in the honorable mentions list. Keep those eyes peeled, because it won’t be long before I release my post and episode on the “best” (i.e. my favorite) film scores of 2024 – I’m almost through whittling the list down, which always ends up being my biggest lift of the year.
Once again there were (as always) too many scores released this month for me to me to cover! Make sure to scroll to the end of this article for a list of even more April scores to check out! Did I miss anything? Well, let me know!
Have a quick read about each of these excellent scores below then give them a listen. Be sure to see what other scores you may have missed by reading past editions of this column
Back to Black – Nick Cave and Warren Ellis
Nick Cave and Warren Ellis have been responsible for some of my favorite recent scores and their latest, Back to Black, will probably worm its way into that list at some point too. There’s a lot of thematic similarity with their score for Blonde, an exploration of the dreams and nightmares of a female artist that’s tortured in the public eye. And just like with Blonde, they approach their score here with beauty and empathy, particularly apparent in “Song for Amy”, a true love letter (love song) to Amy Winehouse, with Cave’s pleading vocals showing how personal the project was to the duo.
Challengers – Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross
If your score is getting multiple remixes and cues are being played in clubs, you’re doing something right. And as far as my knowledge goes, the only score to hold that honor is Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s score for Challengers (with a club mix by Boys Noize and remixes by various other artists over the year). Their score is fun, sexy, energetic techno, the rare film music that makes you want to dance in your seat (or, after the film’s over, at the club with Julia Cicero). But this element has also drawn some criticism – the music very much draws attention to itself, often taking over the scenes in which Reznor and Ross apply it most heavily. Does it work? I think so, enlivening the film and adding heat to the central love triangle.
All You Need Is Death – Ian Lynch
I’m a sucker for some good folk horror, and even better when there’s some weird vocals and metal thrown in. With these elements in hand, of course I was a fan of Ian Lynch’s score to All You Need Is Death. Last things first – this film ends with one of the heaviest tracks I’ve ever heard in a film, “Old God Rising” by the relatively obscure Irish black/death metal band Malthusian, maybe a result of Lynch’s distant past where he was a member in the short lived Irish black metal band Sodb alongside current Malthusian member Johnny King. Beyond the brutal, battering metal are buzzing, unsettling strings and diegetic vocals of long-forgotten songs to summon the dead. While it doesn’t reinvent the growing genre, it’s certainly a welcome addition.
The Glassworker – Usman Riaz and Carmine Di Florio
What do you do when you want to make a hand-drawn animated film, but live in a country with no such industry? For Usman Riaz, you build it all from the ground up. Not only did Riaz score The Glassworker (alongside co-composer Carmine Di Florio), but he co-founded Pakistan’s first hand-drawn animation studio, Mano Animation Studios, and wrote, storyboarded, and directed the film. If anyone is looking for ambitious new year’s resolutions, there’s one for you. Riaz and Di Florio’s score is a sweeping orchestral period fantasy work, filled with some lovely melodic moments and numerous memorable themes. It reminds me a bit of some of Joe Hisaishi’s work, unsurprising given the Studio Ghibli influences across the film and studio, but without ever feeling like a pure imitation or pastiche. This is very exciting work coming from a country where we (at least, in the US) aren’t often hearing or seeing much.
A Few More Scores
As often happens, there were simply too many great scores released in April to cover, so here are a few more:
- Earlybird – Scott Cary
- The First Omen – Mark Korven (Interview)
- Monkey Man – Jed Kurzel
- Scoop – Anne Nikitin and Hannah Peel (Interview)
- Sasquatch Sunset – The Octopus Project
- What Jennifer Did – Nainita Desai (Interview)
- Wild Fire – Brianna Tam
- Abigail – Brian Tyler (Interview)
- Civil War – Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury
- Dragonkeeper – Arturo Cardelus
- Boy Kills World – Ludvig Forssell
- Confidenza – Thom Yorke
- Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part Two – Kevin Riepl
- Unfrosted – Christophe Beck
- We Grown Now – Jay Wadley (Interview)