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Album Details

• Artist: Lisa Gerrard
• Album: Whale Rider Soundtrack
• Label: 4AD
• Year of Release: 2003
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: dscanland on 2003-08-22

Movies are pretty formulaic things. And with Whale Rider being an international feel-good hit in the beating-the-odds, fighting-against-tradition vein of Billy Elliot or Bend It Like Beckham, the odds of the accompanying soundtrack breaking any new ground are slim. I haven't seen the movie, but I have seen the trailer, which in typical Hollywood style gives away far too much. Should soundtracks "work" as independent albums? Maybe not, but that's the way I'll review this one. It's a traditional soundtrack. The music is incidental, meant to accompany the visuals on screen. Lisa Gerrard, formerly of goth-meets-new-age (but not as bad as that sounds) duo Dead Can Dance, is skilled at creating dreamy washes of vaguely symphonic synths. I remember reading a review of an early Dead Can Dance album as being "a lovely shade of grey," and this album uses a similar palette. The mood is mostly somber. The first two tracks, "Paikea Legend" and "Journey Away," are empty and mysterious. Other tracks are more obviously named: "Rejection," "Disappointed," "They Came To Die." "Biking Home" is a ray of sun through the clouds. The mood only approaches something happier - perhaps hope, but not quite victory - in the last track, "Go Forward," which features the voice of the movie's 13-year-old star Keisha Castle-Hughes supported by a guttural, chanting male choir. Musically, the aforementioned synths are to the fore, with intermittent tom-toms, an angelic (but perhaps synthetic) soprano, and some rather remarkable singing by Castle-Hughes on "Pai Calls the Whales" - more, please. With the only English being her brief narration on the opening track, the combination of Asian-sounding female vocals and tribal chants give this album an exotic feel. Overall, it's exactly what you'd expect if you know Dead Can Dance. But with its strong debt to Brian Eno and the better of his "new age" contemporaries (David Sylvian, Harold Budd, Mark Isham), this album could have been written in 1983 as easily as 2003. Which perhaps says more about the formulaic state of movies (and the expectations of directors) than it does for Lisa Gerrard.

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