James Newton Howard - THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS AND SNAKES

[JTN 2,030]

I'll be listening to it today. I would want to get the CD, since I love JNH's HG scores, but the LLL Black Friday Behemoth is approaching with a possible (even probable) JW set, so this has no chance.

 

49 minutes ago, Thor said:

didn't find much to latch on to other than the references to the themes from the previous films

But those themes are so great! 

[Thor 7,508]

They are, but again -- Silva compilation comes to the rescue!

[MaxMovieMan 273]

After listening to the score I agree that I couldn’t really identify anything new thematically but damn those reprises of the old themes are wonderful.

[Richard Penna 3,694]

Listened to the first half or so - seemed more to be some nice highlights amongst an otherwise functional score. Nothing RCP about it of course - it's just not always that interesting.

 

At the moment Happy Hunger Games is an early highlight - the cue from the clip released a while ago. I did like the music in that and I'm glad it was released.

 

The piano versions are beautiful - feels like they are a bonus section to Night After Night.

[JTN 2,030]

5 minutes ago, Richard Penna said:

The piano versions are beautiful - feels like they are a bonus section to Night After Night.

Sounds intriguing. 

[Cristian Lee 35]

6 minutes ago, MaxMovieMan said:

After listening to the score I agree that I couldn’t really identify anything new thematically but damn those reprises of the old themes are wonderful.

There is a new theme in Meet the Mentor, which it reminded me of one of his theme from his violin concerto.

[MaxMovieMan 273]

That track also has three motifs from the original series I couldn’t make out a new melody there that reappeared anywhere else in the album.

 

My personal highlights are:

 

The Arena

Under the Flag

Snow Lands on Top

Victor

Powerful

Passed the Tests

 

These are mostly reprises of my favorite theme from the OG trilogy as well as reprises of President Snow’s theme which JNH expertly reworked in this score.

[badbu 123]

a few cues sounds like Johnny Williams <3 

[GerateWohl 4,370]

I really cannot connect to JNH's Hunger Games scores. Same for his Fantastic Beasts scores. Particularly too bombastic without being rich and too synthetic in sound to capture me emotionally. An issue I also had with all his recent Disney scores. Not my cup of tea.

[ddddeeee 257]

I thought the film and score were alright.

 

The series continues to be absolutely plagued by terrible temp tracking. Why is the Katniss theme here in such a prominent scene? The theme for Rue/rebellion/hope now plays...when Snow enters the... Capitol. What? It's so muddy. I don't know what any of these themes are. I get that music and themes are abstract, but it drives me a bit mad. Music that plays wonderment in one score is reprised to play horror in the next. JNH managed to recently write some excellent thematic scores for David Yates of all people, so I'm going to assume that this is a Francis Lawrence issue.

 

Having said that, I much preferred the action music in this one. It didn't have that weird shrill and synthetic sound that the last score had. The 'Mercy' track that was released seemed like a weird choice for a buzz track, but that cue really is lovely in context. No new themes stood out, but they were clearly there, and I'm sure they'll reveal themselves in subsequent listens. The score was mostly pleasant, if not particularly interesting.

[Edmilson 7,466]

Honestly, this is my least favorite Hunger Games score by a mile.

 

There are some two or three decent tracks but most of them are (again) subdued suspense music or dissonant action music similar to the one in the first 4 movies - which weren't my favorite parts of those scores.

 

And the worst part is that they don't build to anything interesting or cathartic. After Get Her Out, which I think underscore the end of the games, all we got is more dark atmospheric music that ultimately amounts to nothing.

 

But for me the worst part is that here JNH repeats another mistake from Secrets of Grindelwald: relying to much on older material from the franchise, scoring pivotal scenes with reprisals of themes from earlier movies. But unlilke the third Fantastic Beasts, the reprisals here are similar to the ones in Night After Night, where he makes them even more melodramatic with choir and stuff. What I liked about them in the first place is that they didn't need this extra "epicness" to be emotional and touching, so all the choir makes them a little weird.

 

This is my least favorite JNH album of the year, behind Night After Night, All the Light and even Pain Hustlers (which is not bad for the kind of score it is). 

[Cristian Lee 35]

I enjoy this score, it's probably my favorite Hunger Games score since the first one. I like the instrumentation with the piano, viola de gamba, cello d’amore, choir, female voice and the atmosphere and mood they create. This score is more like the first one minus the electronics and it lacks a stunning theme like Rue's theme but the reprised themes from the series are great. Of course the release it's too lengthy so I made myself a 60 min. playlist leaving out the dissonant and violent action music (but I really love the action cue Happy Hunger Games) and some suspense cues. 

 

My highlights are:

 

Meet the Mentor

Sejanus - gorgeous and emotional, pure JNH magic

Hunger is a Weapon

Saving Snow

Ideas Firing

Happy Hunger Games - great action music

Mercy 

Under the Flag - cathartic

Get Her Out - cathartic

Snow Lands on Top

 

and the three piano cues Friendship, Rue's Farewell and Victor - maybe a future album like Night after Night with the music from all the Hunger Games scores? That would be great. 

[MaxMovieMan 273]

17 minutes ago, Cristian Lee said:

and the three piano cues Friendship, Rue's Farewell and Victor - maybe a future album like Night after Night with the music from all the Hunger Games scores? That would be great. 

This would be amazing.

[danbeck 123]

On 17/11/2023 at 12:55 PM, GerateWohl said:

I really cannot connect to JNH's Hunger Games scores. Same for his Fantastic Beasts scores. Particularly too bombastic without being rich and too synthetic in sound to capture me emotionally. An issue I also had with all his recent Disney scores. Not my cup of tea.

Maybe you should try this one as there are no electronics, it’s fully acoustic. 
I liked it, but as others mentioned, it lacks a strong new theme.

[GerateWohl 4,370]

29 minutes ago, danbeck said:

Maybe you should try this one as there are no electronics, it’s fully acoustic. 
I liked it, but as others mentioned, it lacks a strong new theme.

I did. Still what I wrote above applies here as well.

[crocodile 8,017]

 

Karol

[Richard Penna 3,694]

A full listen this evening, and I think there's a very nice 40-ish minute album in there, mainly tracks 3-15, a scattering of cues from the 2nd half, and the beautiful trio of piano pieces at the end.

 

The problem for me is that while it has a nice build-up of melodic, dramatic material up to Mercy, the whole thing falls apart after that and it's largely 45 minutes of not overly interesting suspense/dramatic music, except for the occasional nice reprise of prior themes. The couple of action moments are just typical JNH brass marches/stabs that don't for me present anything even vaguely creative or new.

[Arpy 4,145]

Anyone know where to get the cd? Amazon US is unavailable and I don't see it listed anywhere else 😭

[Jurassic Shark 12,079]

https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/poprock/detail/-/art/james-newton-howard-hunger-games-the-ballad-of-songbirds-and-snakes/hnum/11626901

 

[crocodile 8,017]

Or Amazon UK.

 

The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes Score) https://amzn.eu/d/2N2uzR2

 

Karol

[Arpy 4,145]

Thanks guys ❤️

[thestat 348]

It's a rough one to listen to - I don't agree with Thor's C&C silliness but, man, this could use some pruning. There are some fantastic moments here, especially revolving around Wang's solos and the more FB choir style material and the action is astonishingly fierce - has JNH been this aggressive? But no one can get through this data dump. Please, a nice 70 minutes album.

[JNHFan2000 2,966]

I think the most aggressive action music Howard has written is in Sewer Attack from Mockingjay Pt. 2

[leeallen01 2,136]

When it comes to scores like The Orville etc that has countless hours of incredible music, there should be big releases like they did, having over 4 hours of music to give us pretty much all of the highlights. But with a film like this, with the tracks having a lot of underscore type 'filler' tracks, they really should be cut down to a manageable enjoyable and ultimately interesting listen. And I say this as a diehard JNH fan.

[MaxMovieMan 273]

I like getting all the tracks I can get to be honest.

[Edmilson 7,466]

Me too. Even when I don't care for the extra tracks, I'm still grateful for a more faithful representation of the score. 

 

Which doesn't mean I'll listen to them, of course 

[JTN 2,030]

On 20/11/2023 at 8:23 AM, Arpy said:

Anyone know where to get the cd? Amazon US is unavailable and I don't see it listed anywhere else 😭

https://www.musicbox-records.com/en/cd-soundtracks/13862-the-hunger-games-the-ballad-of-songbirds-and-snakes.html

[Arpy 4,145]

6 hours ago, MaxMovieMan said:

I like getting all the tracks I can get to be honest.

This.

 

Because we all know the agonising helplessness of waiting years for expansions to scores and will probably still be waiting until we're dead.

 

Anyone can create their own curated listening experience, but they can't make new music appear out of thin air.

 

6 hours ago, leeallen01 said:

When it comes to scores like The Orville etc that has countless hours of incredible music, there should be big releases like they did, having over 4 hours of music to give us pretty much all of the highlights. But with a film like this, with the tracks having a lot of underscore type 'filler' tracks, they really should be cut down to a manageable enjoyable and ultimately interesting listen. And I say this as a diehard JNH fan.

Television scores always get a bum treatment because there simply is not the budget to release twelve or however many episodes there are in a season as scores. I'm still weeping that there are so many lovely cues from Murray Gold's Doctor Who scores that will likely never see the light of day. 

Just like Doctor Who, The Mandalorian score releases have a handful of cues from each episode and it leaves you wondering why there isn't more because they've gone to the effort to produce an album, but at the same time, composers and producers are making cuts to make these things marketable in under 2 discs. The whole thing is fucked. 

 

 

[Faleel 5,353]

OTOH, with TV scores it at least seems more likely that unreleased stuff gets dropped on youtube/soundcloud/websites etc.

[Knight of Ren 789]

Finally watched the movie, and the score works a lot better in context than on album, which actually has made me appreciate it a lot more than on the first standalone listens. The movie is not as action-focused as I thought, being concentrated in the middle section, and I think all of the music from that part is in there, but there might be around 20 minutes, perhaps more, of unreleased music, some of it containing nice variations on both old and new themes.

 

At first I though the score didn't introduce any new ideas, but after watching the movie, it's clear there's at least two of them, a vocal idea used for Lucy Gray, and a string-based melody that seems to represent the relationship between Snow and Lucy.

 

Lucy's motif gets introduced in Assigning the Mentors, at 1:27

 

It also appears in the middle of Meet the Mentors, in Hunger is a Weapon and in Strategy, and plays one last time in Lucy?

 

The motif is followed by the theme for Lucy and Snow, at 1:16, and it appears three more times on the album, but I think at least two or three more times in the movie. It's introduced in Meet the Mentors (together with some strings that remind me of The Arsenal), and plays again in Saving Snow, in a pretty efective moment in the film:

 

 

I feel there are some additional motifs, but I haven't been able to identify them yet.

 

I was also surprised by the importance of the songs in the film, with several of them quite memorable in the way they're used, like the new versions of The Hanging Tree, or the way the song The Old Therebefore / Singing At Snakes overlaps with one of JNH's score cues, I think it's Get Her Out, in one of the most intense moments of the film. Definitely needed context to appreciate the score more, as I do now!

[Thor 7,508]

On 22/11/2023 at 12:03 AM, thestat said:

It's a rough one to listen to - I don't agree with Thor's C&C silliness but, 

 

 

 

[Edmilson 7,466]

I just gave a second chance to the album and I think it clicked more with me. I'm still not impressed by the overly melodramatic appearances of older themes, but the new material composed for the score is pretty good, especially the Snow and Lucy love theme (?). Also, the action music is good and even the suspense parts are more interesting.

 

I wish JNH just leaned more towards the newer stuff instead of the old material, but I guess stupid Hollywood producers must love their temp tracks. I imagine it was similar for Williams in the SW sequels.

[Knight of Ren 789]

Yeah, I feel the biggest flaw of this score is that relies a bit too much on old themes, even when it doesn't always make sense, and doesn't allow the new material to shine as much.

 

I mean, his themes for the saga have always been a bit confusing in what they mean or what they represent, but I always interpreted the theme from Arena Crumbles as Katniss theme, so hearing it on Coryo Enters the Capitol and a couple more cues was a bit confusing.

[Edmilson 7,466]

I think the more I listen to this score, the more I warm up to it. The new themes are great (especially the Snow and Lucy theme, which is already one of the best Hunger Games themes JNH wrote) and the Appalachian/folk instrumentation helps differentiate this score from the others.

 

That said, the Snow/Lucy theme felt to me a little similar to Giacchino's sad and tragic theme from Fallen Kingdom. Maybe another case of temp track?