The soundtrack to the film Stuck in Love includes songs from such well-known figures as Elliot Smith and Conor Oberst, but the LP’s best qualities come via portions of Bright Eyes-members Mike Mogis and Nate Wolcott’s original score. Overall, this short, polished dose of mainstream indie studies ultimately shoulders a disparity of quality, but as the record plays the good moments do outnumber the mediocre sections. The result is a solid effort with minor charms that should mainly please fans of the film and the artists involved.
Indie film and indie music are two “scenes” that are seemingly custom-made for each other. And certainly there are movies where the intersection provides for thoughtful and energetic art. But just as often (or possibly even more frequently) the combination can be highly underwhelming and at times even annoying.
Part of the reason concerns a certain laziness that becomes palpable rather quickly after sitting down to engage with the work of some budding young auteur. For what the filmmaker might’ve considered purity, quite possibly in the service of “realism,” ultimately connects in such an uninspired way that it burdens the entire affair with the scent of cliché.
And sometimes it’s so blandly formulaic that it starts to feel like marketing. While I consider myself an unabashed indie supporter in both ocular and aural terms, it’s also impossible to deny that rather huge industries have been thriving around each for a few decades now. In itself that’s not a really a problem. What can be bothersome is the accompanying promotional buzz that attempts (and rather predictably, at this late date) to shape the product as deriving from a reservoir of artistically angelic impulses.
At the risk of coming off as jaded, a common indie reality is that underneath an attitude of separation, the situation is often very similar to what transpires in any corporate boardroom; the attempt to turn a profit. And frankly, the interests of corporations are involved in indie affairs (particularly on the filmic level) at lot more often than many folks realize.
However, make no mistake; I’ve no real quibble with the capitalistic aim. And it should be noted that the very rise of the terminology/category of indie was largely a way to increase capital through branding in the first place. I’m merely noting that a subpar indie flick with a tacked-on soundtrack of “edgy” (read: style over substance) or even worse, “emotionally resonant” (i.e. cloyingly over-sensitive) material is oftentimes far more congruent with a vacuous summer blockbuster than many parties would ever openly admit.
I haven’t seen Stuck in Love, the first feature from director Josh Boone, so I can’t offer any insight into the film’s overall quality. But that doesn’t mean the movie is somehow excused from the considerations expressed above. For part of the soundtrack’s role, especially when prominent musicians are involved, is to serve as advertizing.
And when a soundtrack is poorly-conceived, and especially when it registers like an opportunistic audience grab (which can still be ascertained when considering the sounds in isolation from the images they serve), the results can prove as detrimental as an ill-designed poster, a shoddily-assembled trailer, or a heap of negative reviews.
Happily for Boone (and his distributor Millennium Entertainment), the soundtrack for Stuck in Love hasn’t scared me away from the prospect of viewing his movie. While not without its problems, for the most part it’s a likeable effort. As it plays, it rarely connects as an Earth-shattering collection of sounds, though it certainly had that impact on the director; in a hand-written note from Boone that’s part of the superbly designed LP’s inner-sleeve, he mentions how much it meant to him to work with Mike Mogis and Nathan Wolcott, the composers, producers, arrangers, and performers of the film’s score.
But if a major turn of events for Boone, that doesn’t really translate to the soundtrack’s more modest scale, which blends previously extant song choices with extracts from Mogis and Wolcott’s admirable scoring efforts. It’s a sequencing strategy that pays dividends, for the instrumental palate of these shorter sections brings an appealing contrast to Stuck in Love’s larger vibe, an atmosphere that can be adequately described as a mainstream indie affair.
While Mogis has extensive credits as a producer and engineer, along with Wolcott, he’s also a member of Bright Eyes, and unsurprisingly “The Calendar Hung Itself…” from that group’s third album Fevers and Mirrors turns up here. Even more interesting for fans of that band is the appearance of a previously unreleased original from Bright Eyes’ main-man Conor Oberst.
The record begins with a short passage of drifting acoustic glisten called “Nosebleed” that gives way to “At Your Door,” featuring the husband and wife performing pair of Chris Senseney and Stefanie Drootin-Senseney, better known as Big Harp. Written by the duo in collab with Mogis and Wolcott specifically for the film (the song is credited to all four principals), it’s a very pretty and well-developed slice of smooth contempo Americana that’s best attribute comes through the couple’s vocalizing.
He has bite without sounding affected, and she carries a sweet tone that also thankfully avoids becoming too mannered or fragile. The end result didn’t knock me off my chair, but it still succeeds as a modestly pleasant experience. Things do flirt around with becoming a little too grandiose melodically, but the song is rescued from this pitfall by a concise running time. Following this is a brief instrumental passage titled “Peeping Tom” that employs the drumming of Chris Baechle, a name some might recognize from his membership in The Faint.
If it’s starting to sound like the Stuck in Love soundtrack is essentially a partial profile of the Saddle Creek label (both Big Harp and The Faint figure in the imprint’s roster), that aspect is only intensified by “You Are You’re Mother’s Child,” the unissued track from Mr. Oberst. It’s a solid piece of the guy in acoustic solo mode, though it goes easy on his occasionally raw-nerved emo-gush, a delivery that some listeners (though I am not amongst their number) disdain like nails scraping against a chalkboard.
Oberst is a musically divisive figure in general, and those in the anti-camp might prefer the other two songs on side one, “Polkadot” by Like Pioneers and “Will You Be by Me” from Wallpaper Airplanes. The appearance of both does significantly lessen the Saddle Creek aura, though in my case that’s a little disappointing, for neither cut makes a strong case for inclusion here, at least in purely sonic terms. Much better are the additional two pieces from the score that flank them, in particular side one’s closer “Goodbye,” which utilizes violin and cello to enjoyable effect.
Side two opens with Elliot Smith’s “Between the Bars,” a track from his 1997 LP Either/Or. And that might seem a little (or a lot, depending in your mood), um, opportunistic, for “Miss Misery,” a Smith song from roughly the same era, catapulted the late indie mainstay to much wider fame after it turned up on the soundtrack to Good Will Hunting. However, his showing here mainly feels like a smart addition to Stuck in Love’s general stylistic thrust.
It also might be the best single song on this whole record, though stiff competition does come from the aforementioned Bright Eyes’ cut, and as “The Calendar Hung Itself…” plays it surely does spill large gobs of Oberst’s signature messy feeling all over the room. From there, Stuck in Love’s second side continues to alternate score selections with full-blown songs, and it begins to become apparent that minus this motif the record’s cumulative weight would be considerably lesser.
That’s not to say that Bill Ricchini’s “A Mountain, a Peak,” culled from his 2002 release Ordinary Time (a record this writer has not heard), isn’t a nice surprise. But “Somersaults in Spring” from Friends of Gemini (which features Mogis, Wolcott and additional musicians) travels down the Middle of the Road with a little too much relish for these ears, and as the LP’s closer, it also positively screams out that the movie’s end credits are rolling.
That might not bother those arriving at this record based upon a positive viewing of Stuck in Love, but on its lonesome the song does connect as a somewhat premeditated. In the end it’s not a terrible misstep, for as detailed above the soundtrack does an okay job of surviving its lesser moments. What lingers best though is Mogis and Wolcott’s score. Hopefully they will get additional opportunities to explore this tricky creative avenue in the future.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
B-
