Jonny Greenwood: Phantom Thread

JONNY GREENWOOD: PHANTOM THREAD (2018)

1) Phantom Thread; 2) The Hem; 3) Sandalwood; 4) The Tailor Of Fitzrovia; 5) Alma; 6) Boletus Felleus; 7) Phantom Thread II; 8) Catch Hold; 9) Never Cursed; 10) That's As May Be; 11) Phantom Thread III; 12) I'll Follow Tomorrow; 13) House Of Woodcock; 14) Sandalwood II; 15) Barbara Rose; 16) Endless Superstition; 17) Phantom Thread IV; 18) For The Hungry Boy.

General verdict: Greenwood's most ambitious raid on classical territory so far, but still hardly a replacement for your Deutsche Grammophon collection.

Just another Greenwood soundtrack for just another Paul Thomas Anderson movie? Certainly not by the way that the music community at large seems to have responded to it: everywhere you go, Phantom Thread is almost unanimously hailed as Jonny's best soundtrack so far (even if he still lost the Oscar to Alexandre Desplat), and is often ranked as one of the best musical achievements of 2018 (not that this would mean much — but worth a mention at least).

And not without reason. First, the album returns to the format of a cohesive musical suite: despite the relative length, all of the music here is Jonny's exclusively, and works perfectly well outside of the context of the movie (which I have not seen so far... lots of catching up to do on my P. Th. Anderson). Second, the musical scope and instrumental textures of the album are extremely diverse: although the format is classical throughout, the music encompasses a variety of styles, from baroque to romantic to impressionist to avantgarde to minimalism, with Greenwood now seemingly, if moderately, competent and qualified in all of them. Third, it may be the best produced and most sonically rewarding album of his career, though that is certainly the most subjective and intuitive opinion of them all.

I would like to add «fourth, the music is just great», but am somehow stopped in my tracks by the realization that none of the themes stuck long enough in my mind or shook me right down to the bottom — however, once again, that is just me. There is clearly a big difference here: Jonny is definitely stretching out and attempting to paint on an epic scale rather than a local one. The title track alone goes through four different variations, starting out as a small chamber orchestra piece, then reprised as a sonata-for-piano-and-violin movement, then getting the full symphonic treat­ment (brass, timpani, the works), and finally closing out as a solo violin piece — four different aggregation states of the human soul, if you want a pompous metaphor. In the context of the entire history of classical music, ʽPhantom Threadʼ might not be that great a theme: once you get through to the solo violin variation, it comes across as a nice tribute to some single movement of a J. S. Bach violin sonata. But in the context of the album, those four states are legit parts of a musical journey taken by... (I guess this is where one is supposed to fall back on the movie, but we do want to make Jonny Greenwood's allegedly best album to look like a musically self-con­tained piece of art, right?).

The piano-based pieces are delicate and exquisite Glass-ian / Budd-ian pastiches, well framed by chamber strings (ʽThe Hemʼ, ʽSandalwoodʼ); or, vice versa, melancholic excourses into string-based baroque soul with minimalistic piano at the fringes (ʽAlmaʼ). Explicit dissonance is hit very rarely (ʽBarbara Roseʼ is, I think, the most prominent example, with little pizzicato splatterings all around its clumsy bass strut), but there is just enough depth and complexity in the «normal» pieces to avoid sliding down into cheap sentimentality — this is a tasteful stylistic exercise, not a manipu­lative «Hollywood» orchestral puddle.

Still, yet again I reserve any kind of definitive judgement, because, like most of Jonny's sound­tracks, this one, too, feels more like a Greenwood display of humble adoration for the history of classical music up to the late 20th century rather than a meaningful and challenging Greenwood contribution to the history of classical music. This is, I believe, why he saves all of that creativity of his for soundtracks — as an original soundtrack, this type of art is perfectly alright and just about impermeable to serious criticism; were this, however, to be The Greenwood Oratorio, Jonny would run some serious risks (though not as serious, perhaps, as Paul McCartney did, because Greenwood has had more training with this sort of thing). And yet, at the same time, you are not obliged to look at this as a soundtrack — you can have it either away and get away with it through any loophole you like.

Jonny Greenwood: Inherent Vice

JONNY GREENWOOD: INHERENT VICE (2014)

1) Shasta; 2) [Can] Vitamin C; 3) Meeting Crocker Fenway; 4) [The Marketts] Here Comes The Ho-Dads; 5) Spooks; 6) Shasta Fay; 7) [Minnie Riperton] Les Fleur; 8) The Chryskylodon Institute; 9) [Kyu Sakamoto] Sukiyaki; 10) Adrian Prussia; 11) [Neil Young] Journey Through The Past; 12) [Les Baxter] Simba; 13) Under The Paving-Stones, The Beach!; 14) The Golden Fang; 15) Amethyst; 16) Shasta Fay Hepworth; 17) [Chuck Jackson] Any Day Now.

General verdict: Too much soundtrack, not enough Jonny - then again, maybe it's not a bad thing...

Since we are already neck-deep in Jonny Greenwood soundtracks to P. Th. Anderson's movies, I suppose there is no reason not to mention yet another one: this time, to 2014's Inherent Vice, another one I have not seen, nor have I read Thomas Pynchon's novel upon which the movie was based (sorry, too much culture in this world for poor little me!). However, «mention» is the key word here, because this time around, the whole thing does really look like a genuine soundtrack, rather than an instrumental thematic suite that may be enjoyed on its own, independently of the adjacent material — thus precluding the option of a serious review.

Approximately one-third of the album consists of non-Greenwood music used in the movie — a decent and expectedly diverse selection of tracks, for that matter, ranging from Can's ʽVitamin Cʼ to Minnie Riperton's ʽLes Fleurʼ to some long-forgotten (Tarantino-approved) pop nuggets from the early Sixties (I have never heard the Marketts' ʽHere Comes The Ho-Dadsʼ before, for in­stance — that's some nifty fine and inventive use of the sax out there!). These at least serve an educational purpose, though, clearly, the album cannot be rated based on them, and their effect can be fairly disruptive if you want to concentrate on Greenwood's compositional genius.

Worse, much of the rest is really and truly incidental music: small minimalistic pieces of am­bience that are not worth much outside of the movie. ʽSpooksʼ is just two and a half minutes of lazy mid-Sixties style psychedelic jamming, atmospherically close to the first minute of The Doors' ʽThe Endʼ or a fairly slack Velvet Underground improv on a mediocre evening — with Joanna Newsom, who has a part in the movie, putting a narrative on top (meaning that fans of her voice are obliged to add the album to their collection); ʽUnder The Paving-Stonesʼ later returns to the exact same atmosphere. And ʽAmethystʼ is a fairly typical acoustic folk instrumental with a very Dylanesque harmonica part — you don't really have to be Jonny Greenwood to be able to come up with something like that in 2014.

Basically, this leaves us with three instrumental pieces revolving around the movie's protagonist — ʽShastaʼ, ʽShasta Fayʼ, ʽShasta Fay Hepworthʼ, about 15 minutes worth of pleasant neo­classical chamber music in Jonny's usual neoclassical style; and exactly one track that perks up my interest — ʽAdrian Prussiaʼ, a very interesting mold of classical and electronic music of which I wish there'd be so much more in Jonny's solo catalog. Starting out as a suspenseful, bass-and-cello-based mid-tempo «classical rocker», the track soon gets a fairly harsh, half-psychedelic, half-industrial digital pattern sewn in, with the classical and electronic voices seamlessly merging as a single whole and building up to a small, but elegant crescendo. Hopelessly lost in the befuddling confines of the soundtrack, it's a really auspicious little piece of music that deserves to be extracted, dusted off, and extolled as a good example of genre synthesis.

Other than that, I do believe that this is one of the least essential of Jonny's soundtracks — but, ironically, perhaps one of the most easily accessible, what with all those extra good tracks, many of which many of us have never heard before, showcasing a good knowledge of and taste for old forgotten beauties. (The Minnie Riperton piece is ace, too, and Kyu Sakamoto's ʽSukiyakiʼ is supposed to be one of the most famous Japanese pop pieces of the Sixties, though my personal interest in suave Japanese tenor crooners is fairly small).

Jonny Greenwood: The Master

JONNY GREENWOOD: THE MASTER (2012)

1) Overtones; 2) Time Hole; 3) Back Beyond; 4*) [Ella Fitzgerald] Get Thee Behind Me Satan; 5) Alethia; 6*) [Madisen Beaty] Don't Sit Under The Apple Tree; 7) Atomic Healer; 8) Able-Bodied Seamen; 9) The Split Saber; 10) Baton Sparks; 11*) [Jo Stafford] No Other Love; 12) His Master's Voice; 13) Application 45 Version I; 14*) [Helen Forrest] Changing Partners; 15) Sweetness Of Freddie.

General verdict: Another bunch of those quiet neo-classical soundscapes for your (lack of) attention.

All hail the return of Sire Jehonathan Grenewode, he of the neo-classical persuasion, as he once again flings his talents at the feet of Paul Thomas Anderson, the preeminent movie maker of the turn-of-the-century generation. Unlike There Will Be Blood, I have yet to see The Master, a movie that allegedly explores the subject of mind control, indoctrination, and submissiveness through the parabolic example of a religious cult story — and, most likely, a respectable perfor­mance from the dear departed Philip Seymour Hoffman. But just like the soundtrack to There Will Be Blood, the soundtrack to The Master can readily stand on its own as a 35-minute suite, once you have filtered out the four tracks that do not belong to Jonny and do not mesh at all well with his music — old vocal jazz standards, three of them taken directly from classic diva recor­dings (Ella Fitzgerald, Jo Stafford, Helen Forrest) and one sung (quite poorly, but bravely) by Madisen Beaty, one of the movie's actresses.

Since this is, once again, a piece of classical music, I guess we can only discuss it in comparison with There Will Be Blood — and, frankly speaking, I hear no major differences in approach. If you mixed together tracks from the two albums, you would probably never figure out which tracks belong to which theme. Nevertheless, The Master is not an uninspired carbon copy: my overall feelings about the first album («really don't know what to say but it feels very much alive and kicking») more or less apply to the second as well. As before, most of the compositions flow smoothly and gracefully, but every once in a while there is a dynamic leap — ʽAble-Bodied Seamenʼ introduces a powerful, thunderous bassline and wildly cavorting, dissonant cellos and violins; ʽBaton Sparksʼ, after a pompous Beethovenesque opening, transforms into a moder­nist spiralling whirlwind of psychedelic proportions; ʽHis Master's Voiceʼ, after a couple minutes of quiet string and clarinet interplay, suddenly bursts out with an intense violin solo that threatens to channel Mendelssohn's spirit (if you grant it the appropriate permission). These things, rare as they are, keep the suite from degrading into a lullaby.

On the whole, though, I would generalize that the soundtrack is a bit more serene and placating this time around — I guess crazy cult leaders are ultimately deemed less of a threat than ruthless oil dealers — and that this makes it even harder to comment upon individual tracks, especially without having previously honed one's verbal skills on Brahms and Bartók. With a bit more ten­sion throughout, the suite's come-to-terms-with-oneself conclusion (ʽSweetness Of Freddieʼ), ripples upon ripples of strings and horns reaching a mini-peak and slowly fading away, would probably have carried more impact. As it is, it's... prepare yourself... nice. It may be even nicer if you think of it as an involuntary requiem to Philip Seymour Hoffman, but that's purely optional, of course. One might speculate whether Jonny's inability (or unwillingness) to create angry, jerky drama with his classical experiments had anything to do with his gradual loss of capability to create angry, jerky drama with Radiohead — but that is a question you should rather ask him in person, if you ever get the chance and are willing to risk your health over it.

Jonny Greenwood: There Will Be Blood

JONNY GREENWOOD: THERE WILL BE BLOOD (2007)

1) Open Spaces; 2) Future Markets; 3) Prospectors Arrive; 4) Eat Him By His Own Light; 5) Henry Plainview; 6) There Will Be Blood; 7) Oil; 8) Proven Lands; 9) HW / Hope Of New Fields; 10) Stranded The Line; 11) Prospectors Quartet.

General verdict: The notorious 16th century baroque composer Sir Jonathan Greenwood with his latest set of motets... oh, wait a minute.

I am ashamed to admit that There Will Be Blood was the last Paul Thomas Anderson movie that I personally saw, and confused to recognize that this was the first of several soundtracks that Jonny Greenwood provided for Anderson. To be honest, while I enjoyed the movie (because watching Daniel Day-Lewis is always a delight as long as the script is not completely dreadful), I did not remember much about its music when it was over — largely because, unlike Aimee Mann's songs in Magnolia, it was just background film music to me. But the half-hour album that accompanied it, containing all of Greenwood's score but not the Brahms or Arvo Pärt pieces that were also featured in the movie, does not at all sound like «incidental music»: its compositions are lengthy, complex, and wholesome enough to come across as a suite, one that can be enjoyed without even beginning to suspect that there's this unconventionally symbolic movie about a ruthless oil pro­spector that goes along with it.

Neo-classical suite, that is: for the first time here, Greenwood allows himself to fully indulge in his passion for chamber music and write a set of pieces for classical musicians to perform — in formats ranging from string quartets to piano quintets to small symphonic orchestras. The variety of approach allows me to hear echoes of just about everybody who mattered in classical music in the second half of the 20th century, from Shostakovich to Messiaen to Penderecki to Schnittke to... well, it is silly just to keep dropping names all over the place, especially if the name-dropper is quite far from being a connaisseur of classical oeuvres created in the age of modal jazz, rock'n'roll, and Madonna.

I do not want to jump on the oh-so-easily jumpable «Jonny Greenwood is a rock musician with no academic training, therefore he cannot even begin to approach the greatness of Shostakovich and/or Penderecki on their own turf» wagon; but neither can I claim that the classical music he writes is truly worth your time if you are a buff. All I can say, from a thoroughly layman-like perspective, is that modern classical, for me, falls into two categories — music that makes me go to sleep (approximately 85% of what I've heard) and music that makes me sit up and listen because there's, like, some real life in it. From that crude, simple perspective There Will Be Blood dangles somewhere in the middle.

One thing that Jonny clearly did not want to do was to make his music sound sleepy and ambient; practically each of these pieces shows a certain dynamics, rises and falls, invests in heavy cello barrages and sharply lyrical violin solos, all the while staying in surprisingly traditional territory. Dissonance is used sparingly; in fact, I believe that most of the record would be quite palatable even to those whose tastes in classical music stop at the border that separates impressionism from serialism. At the same time, there is clearly a big spiritual influence here from the «apo­calyptic», WWII-inspired trend in modern music — check out, for instance, the alarm siren-like strings on ʽHenry Plainviewʼ, not unlike something you'd hear in Penderecki's Threnody — which fits in with the tone of Anderson's appropriately apocalyptic movie, but most likely, just reflects Jonny's personal interest in making spooky.

Nothing about the soundtrack strikes me as particularly beautiful or fearful, but it is sprinkled with occasionally outstanding moments — the sprinting Wagnerian cellos in ʽFuture Marketsʼ, the ravaging string-based bolts of lightning in the title track, the percussive African treatment of strings in ʽProven Landsʼ among them. At the very least, the soundtrack shows more energy than In Rainbows (ducks a used copy of the There Will Be Blood DVD); as to how well it fits into the modern classical scene, my opinion should not matter — groping blindly in the dark, I'd say that this stuff makes Jonny look no better and no worse than the average moderately talented graduate of the Juilliard composition department, which would either qualify as a compliment or an insult, depending on your general view of the world. I will merely reiterate that the suite works fine on its own, without any obligatory connection to the movie, that I had a bit more fun listening to it than I expected, and that I think Jonny would fare better as a symphonic composer than a string quartet one — but then, I do have a hard time getting into string quartets in general.

Jonny Greenwood: Bodysong

JONNY GREENWOOD: BODYSONG (2003)

1) Moon Trills; 2) Moon Mall; 3) Trench; 4) Iron Swallow; 5) Clockwork Tin Soldiers; 6) Convergence; 7) Nudnik Headache; 8) Peartree; 9) Splitter; 10) Bode Radio / Glass Light / Broken; 11) 24 Hour Charleston; 12) Milky Drops From Heaven; 13) Tehellet.

General verdict: A highly diverse and knowledgeable soundtrack, but not exactly a source of major excitement.

Say you are one of those people who likes Radiohead, or would like to like Radiohead, but happen to think that Thom Yorke is one of the most obnoxious singers on this planet, and how much more cool Radiohead would be if it had a different vocalist, or maybe even no vocalist at all. If so, could this be a remedy — Jonny Greenwood's body of movie soundtracks, which pretty much works as the substitute for his solo career? After all, Jonny is the musical genius behind Radiohead, or so it is typically assumed, and it is clear that he does so many soundtracks not in order to make a quick extra buck or because he has a secret affair with Paul Thomas Anderson, but simply because this gives him a chance to run a few of his ideas past band control without straining any of his relationships with the other members of Radiohead.

Most importantly, the soundtracks actually work on their own. This first try, for instance, was used in the art-doc movie Bodysong, directed by Simon Pummell and, according to Wikipedia, telling «the story of an archetypal human life using images taken from all around the world and the last 100 years of cinema» — one of those projects that typically commend gushing admiration from The Serious Art Lover, venomous cynicism from The Bullshit Hound Critic, and utmost indifference from 99.99% of the total population of the planet. I have not seen it, so count me within the 99.99% for now, but I did hear the soundtrack and I confirm that the soundtrack can be listened to, enjoyed, and assimilated without any visual accompaniments — or, rather, you can easily make your own visuals up as you go along.

Or not, actually. If you thought Kid A and Amnesiac went all the way to derail Radiohead from the tried and true rock band formula, think again: as a solo artist, Jonny Greenwood cares even less for polished structures, rhythm tracks, and firmly established musical themes. Instead, he goes on to honor as many of his witty influences as possible — starting with modern classical idols such as Messiaen and Penderecki, going on to Coltrane and Miles Davis, and ending with all sorts of electronic wizards. To that effect, The Emperor Quartet has been called on to provide chamber backing, some important brass players have been called on to provide jazz backing, and Jonny himself plays a lot of Ondes Martenot to keep us firmly in the digital age.

It's all cool, and Greenwood's compositional skills are nothing to laugh about — I have no idea what Messiaen himself would have said about tracks like ʽTehelletʼ or ʽIron Swallowʼ, but they have a fairly serious feel, and I have certainly heard plenty of neo-classical pieces that were much more boring, despite being strictly academic. Above everything else, the soundtrack is really and truly startingly diverse. Its classical pieces can be minimalistic (ʽMoon Trillsʼ), neo-romantic (ʽGlass Lightʼ), or epic (ʽTehelletʼ). Its electronic passages may be glitchy (ʽTrenchʼ), trip-hoppy (ʽClockwork Tin Soldiersʼ), or just wobbly-psychedelic (ʽMoon Mallʼ). ʽMilky Drops From Heavenʼ is avantgarde jazz that sometimes devolves into murky cacophony. ʽConvergenceʼ is four minutes of wild tribal percussion, while ʽ24 Hour Charlestonʼ is banjo-led swamp music pep­pered with electronic bleeps that make Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot marriages of the past and the future seem like childplay in comparison. Quite literally, this is the work of a single guy who seems wildly pleased about letting completely loose, for the first time in his life — taking the time to cram all of his passions into a single package.

However, the main problem with Bodysong is not that it is a soundtrack, but that, for all of its endless pool of ideas, it is still underwhelming. Listening to it actually helps me understand why I do not care all that much for post-Kid A Radiohead a bit better — Greenwood may be a musical prodigy and a musical wizard, not to mention a brave conqueror of new frontiers, blah blah blah, but he just isn't a musical genius. Most of these melodies are technically admirable, but I'd be hard pressed to name one which would amount to more than pleasant / respectable / mildly intri­guing background music. Whatever moods these pieces are supposed to convey, they do not convey them with sufficient passion — it is more like a quietly percolating kettle.

See ʽMoon Trillsʼ, the opening piece. It is nicely atmospheric; a quiet, stable, simple piano line as the anchor, and lots of tinkling keyboard starlets, string gusts, and Ondes Martenot whisps whizzing around it. But it is basically just a chunk of ambience, and it never gets the chance to grow into something more significant. I mean, if this were a Steve Reich piece, it would probably go on for 15 minutes instead of 5, and would have ended in some place that would be vastly distant from the beginning — even if we'd never notice that while listening. If this were a Brian Eno piece, it might have been even more stripped down, but the simple piano line would be louder, stronger, and more meaningful and emotional. But this is Jonny Greenwood, and all I can say is... the man gets his job done, and then switches to the next one.

Every other track, be it electronic, classical, jazz, or maniacal tribal percussion, likewise, feels like a job well done and nothing more. For each of these experiments, you can name a dozen people who did something like this earlier and better — their saving grace is that few, if any, people did them all at the same time and in one place. Just quickly skimming over the tracks once more doubles my respect for Greenwood — but not my heartfelt admiration for the music that he is producing. All of a sudden, I begin to miss Thom Yorke... and all of a sudden, I begin to suspect that you can either write great rock guitar riffs or the Turangalîla, but that nobody can do both with the same level of naturally coming greatness.

Returning to the movie, there is a quote from Paul Thomas Anderson about it, describing the experience as «a moving, scary and hypnotic potpourri of images». Perhaps that might be true about the visual aspects (I cannot say anything here), but Greenwood's music, as presented here, is quite far from scary, and only tiny bits of the score demand to be described as «moving» or «hypnotic» (ʽMoon Trillsʼ, despite all its shortcomings, is probably the best of those anyway). Classy, yes; intriguing, yes; definitely worth taking into consideration for a Radiohead fan, yes. But like so many pieces of 21st century A-R-T, its overall ambitions seem to overwhelm its eventual accomplishments. Perhaps if the album weren't labeled Bodysong, but rather went under a title like Purification Music For Your Living Room, the effect would be more adequate.