MP3: Rewrite, The (2014)
Score: Good
Label: Lakeshore Records
Released: February 24, 2015
Tracks / Album Length: 29 tracks / (55 mins.)
Composers: Clyde Lawrence, Cody Fitzgerald
Special Notes: n/a
Review:
Newcomers Clyde Lawrence and Cody Fitzgerald opt for an easy listening, light jazz-pop approach to Marc Lawrence’s latest romantic drama that has a formerly successful L.A. screenwriter taking a distant teaching job and falling for a mature student.
Director Lawrence’s background includes a long tenure in TV – a prolific stint writing for Family Ties preceded popular feature film banalities Miss Congeniality (2000) and Two Weeks Notice (2002) – and the score reflects the overall genial nature of the film’s characters and story, with gentle rhythms occasionally upset by brief rock beats and heavier electric guitar. Most of the score, however, consists of a balance between short transitional cues, a handful of light jazz / rock tracks, and some introspective tracks with piano often delivering the main thematic material.
Stylistically, there are three shades to the score’s mood: a funky main theme variant with an urban feel evoking the writer’s more profitable heyday in the big city; piano and guitar heavy tracks designed as ramps for emotional releases by hesitant characters (“Consequences”); and short intimate theme variations that punctuate moments of reflection, romantic entanglements, or acting as preludes to pivotal decisions.
The musical performances by the small ensemble are first rate, as are the orchestrations, but many cues tend to start, hold and loop a theme section or rhythm, and fade or cut out (like the guitar piece “Solstice”). Vocal source tracks excepted, most cues tend to run between 1-2 minutes or less, making the score proper feel like an assembly of upbeat or contemplative stabs. The Rewrite is still a well-produced score, but its limitations are rather stark when gathered in an album format.
© 2015 Mark R. Hasan
Additional Links:
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