May the odds be ever in your trailer…
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[6.14]
Sabina Tang: Little of The Hunger Games’ soundtrack seems to be actually featured in the film, at least not the songs in their original forms. I suspect this Pistol Annies number to have left its mark as an instrumental, trailing tendrils of inchoate dread that the music shouldn’t by rights evoke. Lyrics aside, it’s a sad, pretty, instantly hummable folk melody that doesn’t make active use of the vocalists’ personae, though I grow increasingly fond of Ashley Monroe’s timbre.
[8]
Alfred Soto: With harmonies evoking the other place that’s quite a remove from hell, these ladies continue their reputation for rooting sublimity in terra firma, in this case Angaleena Presley’s dusky blue notes. Inessential but a relief nevertheless.
[6]
Iain Mew: “Can you hear the devil drawing near?” they sing, and then, a line later, they give you the space to really contemplate the death rattle bass and the tension verges on spooky. The vague, ominous dread is done well too.
[7]
Anthony Easton: I believe the Pistol Annies and Miranda Lambert when they talk about general and localized disasters — the lost job, not paying rent, the banal hunger — just as I believe Taylor Swift when she talks about the broken hearts and bad boyfriends of teenage melodrama. I have not read the books or seen the movie, so I don’t have an opinion about how the soundtrack is loyal to those texts but the abstractions are supposed to be both violent and haunting. Yet I listen to this compared to something like “Lemon Drop,” and the dystopian seems less dangerous then the hardscrabble that’s occurring so close to home.
[6]
Brad Shoup: I can’t put my finger on the melody, but its reverence reminds me of the schlocky “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)”. The electrifying cruelty of “Hell on Heels” is not the same cruelty of the Games, but I was hoping they’d find a good conversion rate. Alas, the title is much more warning than threat. Here I was thinking they’re here to kick ass and chew bubblegum; weirdly, they’re all out of both. Even more disconcerting, Maroon 5 trumped them in the soundtrack stakes.
[5]
John Seroff: Yeah, standard outlaw formula; yeah, Hunger Games tie-in; okay, whatever: you give me a straight-faced murder ballad with ugly reverberating underneath and plenty seething on the skin and you can keep the context cause you done got me already sold. “Run” brings all that plus mourning harmonies, traps that snap shut, tambourines that collapse and claw hammers brought down hard. The sophomore album from these ladies is gonna be a brutal joy; here’s a thoroughly enjoyable and bitter heart to chew on in the meanwhile.
[8]
Michaela Drapes: I am loath to say this, because I rather like what the Pistol Annies are up to in general, but this veers too far into Neko Case/Trio/The Lovemongers territory, and not in a good way. Stick to the stompers, ladies, and leave the dirges to the pros.
[3]