By Michael Abels

Waxwork Records, out now

Extra-terrestrial visitors in the West…

After Get Out and Us, Michael Abels returns for a third collaboration with Jordan Peele, this time with a score spanning a wider range of genre styles with a scope ranging from domestic horror to Western, to sci fi, and throwing in an eclectic bunch of songs into the bargain.

There’s a distinctly “big country” Western vibe to the opening, bringing an impression of open ranges and open skies, with gorgeous sunsets over distant mountains, and it’s a lovely vibe. It isn’t long, however, before weirdness and tension begins to show up, in tracks like “Progressive Anxiety.” Around this point the album also starts to introduce the various songs from the movie, which range from Dionne Warwick’s classic “Walk On By” and Corey Hart’s “Sunglasses At Night” to the more unusual “Obeah Man” by Exuma, and the first release of “La Vie C’est Jouette” recorded by a then-15 year-old Jodie Foster in 1977. All the songs are actually good ones, though the oddest is undoubtedly – and here it’s pushing the definition to call it a song – Michael Wincott’s gravelly lyric-reading of the “Purple People Reader.”

Returning to Abels’s score, it also drifts from the Western type sound to a quirkier Spielbergian or Abrams-ish teen adventure score evocative of the likes of The Goonies or Super-8 in terms of feeling, in tracks like “Preparing The Trap” or “Em & Angel Fly” before becoming full-on horror chase and shock music as the events of the film progress. It’s a good range, and comes over in all the appropriate ways, evoking all the right sensations, from peace, to wonder, to unsettling dread, to breathless excitement.

Originally available on download and vinyl, there is also a double CD edition, and that one’s worth getting if you can find it, as it includes a nice behind the scenes booklet, and more interesting US poster art than comes with the other versions.

Verdict: Regardless of packaging, this is basically a quirky SF Western horror score that does at the end decline slightly into a fairly commonplace drone and pound thriller sound, which is somewhat disappointing. For the most part, though, it’s a pretty great soundtrack album, and well worth a listen. 8/10

David A McIntee