Pitchfork

Writing about soundtracks is difficult. It's something like what a book critic would face if he reviewed a published screenplay. There's what the work was initially meant to do (a screenplay is a blueprint for a film, a soundtrack lends musical support to the drama), and then there's how you experience it on the consumer end (as a book or CD). When one writes about a soundtrack, the task is to tell the reader how it works as a piece of music. But the band, if they did their job right, created the music to work as part of a film first, and as a record second. So the soundtrack record is by definition an incomplete work of art.

The Strangler's Wife is Cul de Sac's first attempt at a film soundtrack, and was written for the low-budget horror flick of the same name. While at work on their latest release, Death of the Sun. the band was approached by Roger Corman's production company about scoring the film, and put their full-length on hold to dive into the project, often improvising live as clips of the film ran in the studio. I haven't seen the film (and probably won't), but the soundtrack to The Strangler's Wife is a worthwhile document that both shows what Cul de Sac does well and reveals the limitations of the soundtrack as record.

The first thing to point out is that The Strangler's Wife consists of 18 tracks over 42 minutes. These numbers are notable for Cul de Sac, a band that's never shied away form the epic and extended. In fulfilling their duties as soundtrack composers, many of the tracks are "cues" rather than fully realized compositions. Since cues, by definition, are small bits of music meant to convey a single emotional idea and often play during interludes as one scene transitions into the next, half of this record's tracks range from around 30 seconds to just over two minutes, and each pretty much embodies one feeling or mood.

Similar in overall sound to Death of the Sun, Cul de Sac here leans away from their former guitar/bass/drums post-rock style toward a more electronically oriented sound. The 90-second "Frustrated Seduction ('Wash it Off!')" consists of some electric keyboard chords and drums cut and processed (presumably by the newest Cul de Sac member, turntablist Jake Trussell) to create a sense of anxious uncertainly, while the one-minute following track "Fifth Victim (Aerobic)" is pure aural violence, with frenetic drum-n-bass beats drowning in distortion. As befits a horror film, the mood throughout is generally foreboding, with the darkness reaching a pitch during the tracks composed for the murder scenes. That said, Cul de Sac do a nice job fleshing out the film's more reflective moments.

Taken together, the album's short tracks are an interesting demonstration of Cul de Sac's range. If you've listened to them for a while, for example, you'll get a kick out of hearing the band that backed Damo Suzuki on tour compose their ultimate Can tribute on "Tailing the Strangler"-- and certainly the idea of using this "You Doo Right" motorik in a chase scene is inspired. But these quickie moods are over so quick that there's a bit of a whiplash effect when listening to the entire record. The constant shifts keep the listener skimming the surface of the music.

What redeems The Strangler's Wife as an album is the handful of excellent acoustic guitar instrumentals by Cul de Sac leader Glenn Jones. Despite the quick and improvisational nature of this project, there's nothing half-assed about Jones's melodies. While short, "That's Great Then, Isn't It?" brilliantly combines harmonically rich plucked chords with grating scrapes of digital noise. The five-minute "Mirror II (Mae and Elana)" is positively gorgeous, as Jones channels the lyricism of the late John Fahey (a former Cul de Sac collaborator) in a duet with violinist Jonathan LaMaster. On this sampler plate of a record, this is the meat, and when I return to The Strangler's Wife soundtrack it will be to cherry pick highlights like "Mirror II".