Review Summary: A roller coaster of emotions and excellent music, all built in one soundtrack.
The book Where the Wild Things Are is a dramatic story of a boy expanding an entire new world coming straight from his imagination. This book is fantastic and historically important because it made such a cultural impact with a mere ten sentences, ten sentences that influenced kids around the world with its short, but unbelievably creative story. Director Spike Jones woke up one day and made a decision that could be a huge hit or miss. Adapting a ten-sentence novel into a feature length movie is no easy task, but Jones was ready to work his magic. Of course, no movie can reach greatness without a soundtrack of equal greatness. If the movie reach reached the goal it was going for is for you to decide, but without any doubt, the soundtrack is above and beyond.
Former Spike Jones girlfriend and Yeah Yeah Yeah’s lead singer Karen O took on the task of constructing this music. Step one was assembling a backing band, which included many people like members of the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s. This group of people soon became known as The Kids, thus officially forming
Karen O and The Kids. Now time for step two, the music.
It is hard to decide if this should be called and “album” or “soundtrack”, due to its ability to stand strongly as a single work of art that happens to be used in a film. While personally I would call this an album, I am going to be proper and call it a soundtrack.
The “soundtrack” opens with a sentimental little audio clip straight from the film, which leads into
Igloo a track consisting of soft humming and light guitar with a hint of tambourine. There are no actual lyrics in the song but it provides an excellent opening with a decent taste of what the overall feeling of the soundtrack is. This leads into the soft keyboard work of the soundtracks single,
All Is Love, this guitar quickly picks up the pace leading into quick guitar and child like vocals making an excessively happy song that is spilling joy like a sink spills water.
The soundtrack is much like the movie; an emotional rollercoaster. With the chanted and heavy song
Capsize consisting of ritual clapping a howled vocals. And the slow, somewhat depressing track
Hideaway which is just Karen O and a few backing instruments used sparingly for all five minutes of the song. Swapping back to the upbeat songs the soundtrack jumps too
Heads Up, a song just as happy and joyous as ,
All Is Love, or its reprise
Building All Is Love. This version is quite similar to the first but bolder instrumentals, making it debatably better.
The album ends much like it began with
Sailing Home, a one minute tune that is just as uplifting as it is sad, also very similar to the movies ending. I believe that this is what makes the album so great, the music is fantastic, but it literally puts you in the film. Listening to this fully and completely is equivalent to watching the movie or reading the book. It takes you on the emotional trials of the imaginative boy Max, or his wild thing companions Carol, K.W., Alexander, Ira, Judith, Douglas, and The Bull.
