Notes & Personnel Info |  | The Morvern Callar soundtrack (missing subtitle: "The Big Chillout") dispenses with the "music inspired by the film that never actually plays during the film" stunt that's prevalent in so many other soundtracks. Instead, it's intrinsically linked to the film. More specifically, it's a re-creation of the mix tape left to the heroine -- Morvern Callar -- by her boyfriend, just prior to his suicide. The tape is Morvern's constant companion; she seemingly comes to grips with her loss by losing grip of everything, save for the tape -- marked "Music for You" -- that is left to her. She takes care of what used to be her boyfriend to the tune of the Velvet Underground's endearingly na?ve "I'm Sticking With You," she works/sleepwalks around a fluorescent-lighting daymare of a supermarket while Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra's "Some Velvet Morning" wafts through her ears, and Holger Czukay's "Cool in the Pool," an oddball disco blooper, plays as she hits a dancefloor in Spain. The film, directed by Lynne Ramsay (Ratcatcher), is driven by its hallucinatory nature, and the music on the mix tape is perfectly complementary. Even at its most propulsive -- Can's Funkadelic goof-groove, ("I Want More") -- there's a sense of dazed displacement. Both Broadcast's "You Can Fall" and the first half of Stereolab's "Blue Milk" pensively levitate, fostering the lost atmosphere more than any of the other songs on the tape. To Morvern's mate's credit, he had a strange sense of humor, evidenced by his inclusion of Ween's "Japanese Cowboy" amidst a smattering of Aphex Twin tracks. However, there is some definitive proof that his mind wasn't right prior to his decision to off himself -- no one in their right mind would put Boards of Canada's "Everything You Do Is a Balloon" anywhere but last on a mix tape. ~ Andy Kellman |
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