- Record Label: Interscope
- Release Date: Sep 29, 2009
- Critic score
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- By date
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Neither a straightforward score nor a collection of kid-friendly indie rock songs, it lies somewhere intriguingly in between--and it's just as good, if not better, than the music these artists make with their main projects.
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The Wild Things soundtrack boasts enough illuminating, atypical turns from Karen O that make it worth experiencing independent of its source.
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UncutNot tunes for kids: simply some of Karen O's sweetest songs yet. [Nov 2009, p.100]
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Where The Wild Things Are has much to offer fans of wide-eyed, unpretentious indie-pop, but I can’t help but wish that sentiment could be applied to the soundtrack as a whole.
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O is like a baby sitter who plays kids Joy Division records before lights out: kinda scary, but they'll wake up cooler in the morning.
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This soundtrack is a successful exercise in painting pictures with music.
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O does an excellent job accompanying the perpetual dawn and dusk of the film's photography with an organic, absolutely non-obtrusive series of interrelated songs.
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If it is indubitably more soundtrack album than bigshot solo debut, this record certainly provides irrefutable, definitive, official proof of O’s talents as a songwriter in her own right.
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Though the tracks sound like they’re tied to another project, most could stand on their own.
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She's made a fine, loud career out of channeling childlike abandon, and the rumbling acoustic guitars and schoolyard choruses (featuring the Yeah Yeah Yeahs guys, Deerhunter's Bradford Cox, and the Bird and the Bee's Greg Kurstin, among others) are both joyful and foreboding.
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Where the Wild Things Are, director Spike Jonze's surreal vision of childhood angst, has inspired an equally weird but altogether more joyous work from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs frontwoman.
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If there are occasional missteps (even for a soundtrack to a children's film, one song that hinges on spelling is plenty), Where the Wild Things Are stands as the rare soundtrack that's an essential listen.
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No matter what music critics might say about the album, Karen O scores a direct hit in her most important demographic. That she was able to do it without pandering or obvious compromise is a tribute to her artistry.
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The soundtrack strikes a balance between riotous clamor and rueful contemplation, enlisting a lot of mallet percussion and vigorously strummed acoustic guitars.
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Not surprisingly, given its origin, not everything here works as well on record as it does in the movie, where a meandering tune-fragment like 'Cliffs' adds emotional flesh to the minimalist bones of Jonze's story. Even then, though, there's that voice.
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Sublime companion to kiddies’ book adaption from Yeah Yeah Yeahs frontwoman.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 16 out of 22
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Mixed: 2 out of 22
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Negative: 4 out of 22
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DarnellSOct 20, 2009I don't know what IT is but this puts me THERE, which is a small miracle these days.
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jfOct 17, 2009