I’ve so fallen in love with “About a Boy’s” original soundtrack that I’m afraid to see a press screening of the movie, which will hit theaters May 17. I fear that the film may have the same effect a so-so video has on a brilliant song. You know how it goes. You form an intimate bond with a piece of music, only to have it squashed by absurd images that torment you like a reoccurring rash each time you hear the song. (Think of Wayne, Garth & Co. singing Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” in a Pacer.)
The beauty of “About a Boy’s” original soundtrack is that the listener does not have to see the film to become totally engrossed in the music. The score’s style is somewhere between that of Burt Bacharach and Fatboy Slim, and strung together with quirk and flare. It’s breezy and retrogroovy in places, intimate and graceful in others. And though there are moments of campy color, the overall appeal of the soundtrack is an innate, awkward sweetness.
The album, which hits stores this week, was created entirely by Damon Gough. The 30-year-old Brit, the brains behind the respected, eclectic outfit Badly Drawn Boy, also created the critically acclaimed 2000 debut, “Hour of the Bewilderbeast.” On the soundtrack, Gough’s smooth, carefree vocals skip atop catchy melodies like “A Peak You Reach” and “Above You, Below Me,” then waft dreamily over numbers such as “River-Sea-Ocean.”
The lyrics may sound corny on their own: “You and me could never hide, too busy walking out of stride,” but in the context of the music, they are intensely personal and charmingly clever. The music is a gleaming mix of simple acoustic guitar, swirling orchestration (violins, horns and piano) and glimmering keyboard accents. The record works as both background music and a sonic centerpiece.
Author Hornby, a snobbishly picky music fan, wanted Gough to come up with music for the screen adaptation of his third novel. He was already a big fan, much like the film’s directors, Chris and Paul Weitz. The Weitz brothers’ idea for the perfect “About a Boy” score was pretty ambitious; they had Simon & Garfunkel’s soundtrack for “The Graduate” in mind. And Gough was hesitant at first. The former indie artist had never scored a film before, and felt that if he did accept the mission, he would like it to be a bit funkier, say more along the lines of Curtis Mayfield’s 1972 “Superfly.”
But once Gough read Hornby’s book, he was inspired and quickly wrote four songs. Two from that initial batch ended up as the singles “Silent Sigh” and “Something to Talk About.” The songwriter was further fueled when footage from the film started rolling in. In the end, he wrote over 70 pieces for the movie, from 21-second interludes to five-minute-long songs.
“It was a long shot for them to think that I could do the soundtrack,” Gough says. “But I immediately understood why they asked me. It’s less about the music that I write and more about the way I approach it.” Perhaps Hornby himself sums up Gough and the soundtrack best. “It’s got soul,” he says. “It’s literate without being pretentious.” And if you choose to skip the movie, you’ll save yourself 10 bucks, too.
