Dedication Film Soundtrack

Dedication Film Soundtrack



Just as Dedicationrejuvenates the pedestrian genre of the Romantic Comedy with some sorely missing rough edges, so the Dedication Soundtrack rejuvenates the pedestrian genre of the Indie Rock Movie Soundtrack with some equally missing, equally rough edges.



Himself a former roadie for Fugazi, Dedication director Justin Theroux displays an innate knack for finding the right music in the least expected, most neglected places. Many of the artists represented here, though exploding in the world of underground music, have up to now only tickled the margins of mainstream consciousness.



These are musical strangers of the most divergent and irreverent variety, meeting only now, in the silver screen world of Dedication<. But for all their diversity, what really stands out are the seemingly coincidental continuities. Notice the raw guitar fingerpicking that links Cat Power, Buddy Moss, Ed Shearmur, and Dr.Isaiah Ross. Or the abundance of mellotrons and vintage synthesizers all over the tracks by The Strokes, Fischerspooner, Deerhoof, Ed Shearmur, and Au Revoir Simone. Or the prevalence of speaker-distorted vocals and feedback in Dr. Isaiah Ross, Lightning Bolt, Fischerspooner and Deerhoof.



In the center of all of it is the startling music of the latter band. It was Deerhoof superfan Theroux who initiated the friendship that ultimately led to their combination of talents in Dedication.



"I wanted both Billy [Crudup] and Mandy [Moore]'s characters to have very much their own music to accompany their emotional arc and their characters' fluctuations throughout the film," says Theroux. "I adored Cat Power for Mandy, but since the movie is for the most part laid out through Henry's [Crudup's character] perspective, I needed a more disjointed, more eclectic sound that matched his disjointed, obsessive personality. It had to be simultaneously unsettling and beautiful, something that is a very rare thing to stumble across. That being said, well before we had even shot a single frame of film, I knew that Deerhoof needed to be a major part of this film. They are a perfect mix of both. Exceedingly beautiful, but very energized and raw. I can't say enough about their contributions to this film. They are a band that is beyond exceptional."



After Theroux had placed songs like "Our Angel's Ululu" and "Hark The Umpire" into crucial moments of the movie, he and Deerhoof began recording new material, including the present version of "Little Drummer Boy," and a Deerhoof original called "Matchbook Seeks Maniac" that drummer Greg Saunier says originated as a "devious plan" to suggest swapping the Jesus and Mary Chain lullaby that played over an early cut of the end credits with "a song with the same washed-out sound and Ronettes-style drum beat".



Things took another uncanny turn in late summer 2006, when Dedication Music Supervisor Tracy McKnight approached the respected Hollywood composer Ed Shearmur, in the unlikely event that he would consider creating some cues for this small indie movie. Shearmur had just gone to see a Radiohead concert, and was particularly struck by the opening band - Deerhoof. Wishing he could find a way to work with them somehow, he arrives the next morning to the Dedication DVD sitting on his desk, proposing exactly that.



Shearmurloved Dedication and invited Deerhoof to perform on the cues he was composing, as evidenced by the CD's two "Suites"; created for this release from various parts of the film. Hitting on a stylistic amalgam that seems to glue together the wildly disparate and untamed sounds of the other artists, Shearmur's pieces manage the miraculous.



And so it is with the soundtrack as a whole, a charming and nourishing gift to the 21st century music fan who has no regard for the supposed boundaries of style. Says Saunier, "All this music and noise that should never be able to go together, it's like it finally reaches some celestial accord in the world of Dedication, unique to Dedication."