Happy Feet score
© N/A

Mania Grade: A+
Score By: John Powell
Info: 29 tracks, 60.1 mins.
Publisher: Warner Sunset/Atlantic

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"Happy Feet Soundtrack"

This is an astonishing score.  Apart from a single, simple melodic phrase associated with the sense of family that runs throughout the storyline, John Powell’s music for Happy Feet is difficult to pin down.  It’s almost impossible to describe individual tracks or cues, because they are continually changing.  And most tracks run into the next one with little break in between, intensifying the schizophrenia of the score, which exists on multiple levels and serves to drive the music into fascinating extensions and progressive stylisms. 

The hip-hop song-oriented soundtrack CD to Happy Feet came out last Halloween.  Ignore it.  This is the true soundtrack for Happy Feet, released last week by Atlantic Sunset/Warner. Embodying two-and-a-half dozen short tracks – most of which are run-on tracks that end up providing a single listening experience from start to finish.  Composer John Powell, noted for his scores to X-Men: The Last Stand, the ambient score for United 93, and the eclectic score for Ice Age: The Meltdown – and those were just this year – has crafted a dazzlingly varied and intricately compelling score that is as wild in its shapeshifting as it is powerful in its honest poignancy. 

Almost every cue changes shape and pattern at least once; many shift in shape and mass and density and texture multiple times – but that is entirely the score’s charm.  The music moves freely from farcical interpretation into jaunty musical scherzo into emotive poignancy and back again.  It’s almost impossible to put a stamp on the score, and that’s what makes it so deliriously enjoyable to listen to.  Powell is all over the map – but not in such a way that nothing works together or the music shatters into wild chaos.  Powell holds it very well together, appeasing its diversity with controlled forays into unusual territory, but reigning it back in and solidifying the whole score with an omnipresent pattern of emotive tenderness – as with the diverse band of penguins that people the film, they demonstrate differences in temperament and personality and even species yet share a common bond of family and commitment that links them closely together.  Powell music does essentially the same thing.  Instrumentally, texturally, and thematically, the score roams all over, eager to explore some new alleyway or nuance or style. It’s almost like herding cats down the road – they’re going every which way; except that Powell has them all leashed in and they keep returning to harmony and resolution.  Powell almost approaches the frantic cartoon music of Carl Stalling or Scott Bradley, but holds back just on the other side of that fence, retaining a poignant elegance and emotional straightforwardness that is not often found in Stalling or Bradley’s music.  The dramatic intensity of the assault from “The Skua Birds,” piercing rhythm driven by massed, beaklike pecks of percussion, breaks for a touching moment from harmonic choir and strings. 

Use of large chorus (said to be up to 600 voices in places) elevates tracks like “The Alien Ships” into mystical tone-poems of awesome beauty.  “First Contact” morphs from an atmospheric vocal piece, all beautiful angels and aliens, into a lavish surge of resonant strings and winds, moving quickly into a strident rhythm piece driven by low piping winds and plucks of string bass.  Instrumentally, the score is equally diverse, ranging from surging symphonics to delicately strummed mandolin to deep-throated electric guitar, and an array of choirs and vocal textures, frequently bridged by some stunningly persuasive dramatic orchestral air or marvelous melodic upsurge. 

Its diversity is magic.

In addition to Powell’s “background” score, there are five songs distributed throughout the CD – but these do not resemble the intrusive blatant commercialism of most “let’s-throw-a-dance-tune-into-this-scene” movie songs nor do they have anything to do with the hip-hop style of the previously-released song soundtrack. The tunes included amongst Powell’s Happy Feet score are carefully crafted parts of the score: songs or vocalisms that are used dramatically, effectively, and most enjoyably. The songs fit well into the diversified sonic mix of the score and this album, and are in fact interesting enough covers to fit very nicely into the overall manic merging that makes up Powell’s score.  

We have a cute version of the Beach Boy’s “In My Room,” angelically sung by a children’s choir backed by large orchestra.  “Adelieland” is a fun jazzified lounge dance cue for swing band with a prominent organ lending a cool vibe and texture; midway through the cue morphs into a tender and poignant string bridge, before returning to the dance routine. 

Other songs are as progressively diverse as the score tracks.  “Lovelace’s Pile,” for example, begins as cute R&B-styled instrumental featuring a trio of provocative female singers intoning in enticement.  The track is broken by a poignant string bridge, before opening intro a sultry soul ballad from the same singers, which is again developed back into the opening wordless vocal segment.  This gives the song less of a songlike style and more of a scorelike quality through its progressive development, which fits nicely into the sensibility of Powell’s diversity of style and texture in this score. 

The clear-toned trumpet near the middle of “Exile” resonates provocatively before the track segues into a sorrowful hymn for male vocal, which itself segues directly into the same voices backing a provocative and melancholy Hispanic rendition of the classic Shangri-La hit, “Leader of the Pack,” sung by Dan Navarro with Carlos Murguia tracked into the backing vocals. 

“Tap Versus Chant” is a deliriously magical track combining the sounds of hundreds of slapping, tapping footsteps with a chorus of four main singers expanded in size synthetically, intoning with low resonance and assuredness.  It’s an amazing track, culminating in the angelic choir of “First Contact,” morphing into the dynamic, powerful choir intonation of “The Helicopter.”  The tap returns in “Communication” for a terrific, massed tap-driven rhythm piece for full orchestra, resolving the score with a final restatement of Powell’s slow, main family theme.