By Christopher Lennertz

Madison Gate Records, out now

The twists and turns of the superhero world reflected in its music…

The most recent season of the popular comic-book adaptation has a soundtrack album that’s very much the proverbial curate’s egg. Scrambled.

Christopher Lennertz’s score for the series is interspersed throughout by lightweight songs by various artists, which as well as fitting the tone of the series as a twisted dystopian romp, also frequently work as kind of filks – or at least somewhat black-humoured pastiches of popular genres, notably Country Rock. Some, of course, merely cover versions of genre-appropriate songs – such as Karen Fukuhara singing “Dream A Little Dream” – but Laurie Holden’s “America’s Son” is a pure-bred satirical pastiche that sounds like somebody set some background chat from Far Cry 5 or GTA V  to a classic rock vibe. (And is really quite amusing, even if it would equally belong in something like America: The Motion Picture.)

In total there are five songs; two by Laurie Holden, two by Miles Gaston Villanueva, and the one by Fukuhara. The rest of the score is by Lennertz, who’s best known for scoring comedy movies, such as most of Melissa McCarthy’s output, Ride Along, Horrible Bosses, and their sequels. Given this track record in comedies with action elements, his style is quite well suited to the score here, but is somewhat of a mix of pastiche (again) genre motifs – notably the likes of “Soldier Boy” – and modernistic percussion, rapid tone changes, and, well, noise.

This is probably not helped by the actual compilation of the soundtrack volume, as it’s a score that works well within the context of the episodes, but with compositions often too short and bitty to work as listening pieces. That’s a shame, as some better editing together of the appropriate cues might have produced an album as listenable as the show is watchable.

Verdict: It has plenty of good little pieces and moments, but isn’t particularly cohesive, and doesn’t make the best use of Lennertz’s work. 6/10

David A McIntee

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