La-La Land records is releasing a series of quite different releases which I will be reviewing here today from romantic comedy, to Sci-Fi action, to soap opera music!

Christopher Young’s busy 2009 seemed to take him to hell and back with some of his strongest music in years accompanying the chilling Drag Me To Hell and Love Happens--an innocuous comedy starring Aaron Eckhart and Jennifer Aniston.  Romance dramas are rare in Young’s output coming along aevery couple of years.  It is definitely a chance for the composer to explore his lighter and lyric side.

The opening title track presents a gentle theme moving between marimba rhythmic ideas (sometimes mimicked in strings) in a gentle rolling motion and a nice guitar idea that is beautiful in its simplicity and instantly engaging.  Young creates a more contemporary sense to the music by scoring some moments for multiple guitars often giving a gentle feel to the music while warming up the sound with a fuller string orchestra.  On display here is what you can do just with strings and some well-chosen percussion representing the sort of restraint one rarely hears in over-scored films.  The gentle thematic idea bubbles along throughout the score with some of the music feeling like a warmer version of a Thomas Newman indie score.  Listening carefully one can hear how Young takes the smallest of motives and through repetition and subtle shifts in orchestration or harmony supports the on-screen narrative.  Though the rhythmic pulses provide a sense of forward motion, musically the ideas tend to stay fairly static at times.  The score is mostly a relaxed affair with many nice touches to provide variety to the small amount of material explored here.

La-La Land provides seven tracks listed as “bonuses” but no liner notes to explain if these are tracks omitted from the final film.  They are mostly guitar-driven light urban music with some wordless choral overlays.  Titles are different so they do not appear to be alternate cues.  Their inclusion adds roughly 20 minutes to the disc to make it a hefty portion of Young’s romantic comedy scoring style.  Check out a sample of the score at the label’s website: http://www.lalalandrecords.com/LoveHappens.html.

Yes, it is almost halfway through September, but after a month of houseguests and a backlog of things for review here are some highlights from last month that were "new".

I'll start with the only classical release in the bunch.  Naxos released this 2-disc set, Lincoln Portraits, which is a superb collection of pieces about our 16th president released last February.  Yes, Copland's familiar work is there, but of the 8 pieces represented, it is just another fine performance of one of that master's pieces.  It's the amazing work by George Frederick McKay that will give you the most pleasure on this disc of music that includes pieces by Ives, Persichetti, Harris, Bacon, Turok and Gould.  Why is one of our great conductors, Leonard Slatkin not better recognized?  Here he reminds us of those great RCA Copland collections made with St. Louis.  Here he has gone a bit further east to another great regional orchestra in Nashville.  It's a great release of some fine American Music.

Dr. Kildare is a bit before my time, and I waited a bit before picking up this Film Score Monthly 3-disc survey of music from the series.  The Goldsmith theme is one of his more familiar and the underscoring for the series is superb throughout.  It makes for a lot of medical music but is a great set.

I almost missed La La Land's release of Airplane!  This quintessential Elmer Bernstein comedy score fills out any collection of the composer's work.  It's great fun hearing this music on its own while recalling what scenes it goes with along the way.

And now two new scores are also worth noting.  Marco Beltrami's score for Knowing is a great listen that feels at times like it is haunted by the ghost of Goldsmith.  Beltrami's signature sinous melodic ideas are also on display and this is probably one of his better scores in some time.  Fascinating orchestral colors and exciting rhythmic ideas are on display throughout.

Finally, Christopher Young returned to all out horror scoring with his over-the-top score for Drag Me to Hell.  This is great horror movie music complete with organs and full orchestral writing reminiscent of the composer's Hellraiser days.

It's almost time to do this again for September!  But if you've missed any of the above, enjoy!