By Danny Elfman and Chris Bacon

Lakeshore Records

Wednesday Addams has a mystery to solve…

Elfman has, of course, a distinctive sound from his many soundtracks for Tim Burton, as well as the Men In Black trilogy and in the MCU with Dr Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness. Chris Bacon has worked with Elfman before, taking over the scoring duties on Men In Black International, and providing additional music for Multiverse Of Madness, so their collaboration here is fairly natural.

The Elfman input is unmistakable from the get-go, with the gothic organ and harpsichord type of sounds right there in the opening theme, which has a very Addams Family-ish air without having any sign of the familiar finger-snapping motif or melody. It does a fine job of introducing that this is Wednesday Addams, but her own show with her and its own themes.

From there on in, there’s a mixture of tracks composed solely by Elfman – such as “Wednesday And Morticia” – tracks solely composed by Bacon, starting with “The Monster”, and tracks co-composed by both, which is actually most of them.

Elfman’s elements tend to be in the form of the piano, organ, or harpsichord sounds, while Bacon seems to bring more of the airier vocal elements, and some of the more comedic-sounding tracks, such as “It’s A Snood,” which sounds like it belongs in a Pixar or Dreamworks animated comedy. Really, though, it’s hard to tell who did what on the dual-composed tracks, as both composers have done prior work that involved all the types of sound, be it the gothic keyboard, the vocals, the strings, or the electronic beats that turn up now and again.

This is a good thing, as it means that the score has a consistency despite the duality, and the overall flavour is of the darkly comedic and gothic horror reinventing for a modern audience – in other words, exactly what the show is meant to be.

It’s a decent length of listen, with 48 tracks running over an hour and forty-nine minutes, so you’d think it’s pretty complete, but in fact nowadays modern seasons have so much music that we’ve started to see the soundtracks released in multiple volumes, like Andor. His Dark Materials, and Rings Of Power. This means that there are some good musical moments missing, most of which listeners probably won’t notice or miss, but it’s a shame the source music track of Wednesday playing “Paint It Black” is absent, even if it was less cool than when Ramin Djawadi did it in Westworld.

That said, the listening experience here is pretty good: Elfman fans – especially of his Tim Burton collaborations – will love it, and it fits the vibe of the show. It has a good mix of several musical genres and instrumentations and, while largely based around about three leitmotifs, never feels limited or repetitive.

Verdict: Elfman’s on form, Bacon is a good addition, and it’s nice value for money too. 9/10

David A McIntee