Austinist Album Review: Mister Lonely Soundtrack by J. Spaceman and the Sun City Girls
Keeping in mind that filmmaker Harmony Korine’s previous projects have been instigative, shocking, and generally uncomfortable cinema experiences, Mister Lonely’s subdued humanity and mute hopefulness might make it the oddest movie in his oeuvre. And to communicate, musically, the happy-sad story of a commune of celebrity impostors forced to come to terms with the selves they’ve kept buried, Korine tapped Spaceman 3 vet and Spiritualized frontman (coming to Austin for ACL) Jason Pierce, a.k.a. J. Spaceman, and the odd-ball Arizona avant-rock group Sun City Girls to score the film. If you’re at all familiar with the Sun City Girls’ erratic, experimental output or Mr. Spaceman’s tendency toward bombast and symphonic overload, than the soundtrack to Mister Lonely should be a hushed surprise for you – which makes perfect sense considering the restraint that Korine must have put on himself to make this film in the first place.
The score to Mister Lonely is punctuated by soft and atmospheric numbers that rarely cross the line into the dissonant or even vaguely experimental. Other than J. Spaceman’s “Panama 1” and a few select moments stretched out over the course of the record, Mister Lonely is almost trance-inducing in its prettiness. The Sun City Girls provide a calm, country-tinged ballad in “3D Girls,” and J. Spaceman’s “Garden Walk” is as neatly classical as anything he’s liable to write. Instead of cramming an orchestra into every song like on the overblown Spiritualized album Let it Come Down, Spaceman’s sparing use of instrumentation makes the record that much more listenable. Sun City Girls must’ve gotten the memo, because their compositions are sweet and to the point as well. Their lovely “Mr. Lonely Viola” lays on the sentimentality with sweet gusto but cuts it off before letting it turn into sap. They even give us a little jaunty organ rag with “Circus Theme,” and close the album with a string-laden lullaby called “Farewell.”
After all those niceties, it feels wrong to wish for the very eccentricity that these musicians harnessed so well to create the Mister Lonely score, but while the drifting, gauzy nature of the score might fit the film perfectly, it is missing the variations of sound and mood that fans of either of these two artists might come to expect. But really, it’s not a high price to pay for a work that is already satisfactory in its own quiet way.
Mister Lonely Official
Mister Lonely Trailer
J Spaceman MySpace
