• Composed by Lorne Balfe and Stargate
• Relativity Music Group / 2015 / 40m

A group of aliens decide to move to Earth and call it “home” in Home, a Dreamworks animation with the voices of Jim Parsons, Rihanna, Jennifer Lopez and Steve Martin.  It was not very well reviewed, but still made lots of cash.  With an accompanying “concept album” featuring songs performed by Rihanna and Lopez (and others), the score album is perhaps going to drop under the radar a little, but at least it has been released, albeit only digitally.  The score is credited to “Lorne Balfe and Stargate”; the latter is not the device from Roland Emmerich’s movie or indeed any of its tv spinoffs but rather the Norwegian songwriting duo Tor Erik Hermansen and Mikkel Storleer Eriksen, who were responsible for writing some of the songs on the concept album, one or more of which were I assume incorporated into Balfe’s score to provide the slightly curious co-credit.

Whatever the situation with the credits, the music is exactly as you might imagine it to be.  There’s a long-established style for these scores by Balfe and his Remote Control cohorts for animations and it is stuck to rigidly.  The music is fast-paced, bouncy, cheerful, tuneful, fun and very easy, undemanding listening.  There are plenty of action sequences and plenty of sweet sentimental emotional moments, just a hint from time to time of some sci-fi/space elements with some twinkly “aaaah” sections and through some choral effects.  The main theme is distractingly similar to “Tomorrow” from Annie, and while it’s not exactly the same, the chances are slim of you doing anything other than singing “The sun will come out… tomorrow!” (etc) after the album finishes.  (Perhaps Charles Strouse should have got co-credit along with Balfe and Stargate.)  You’ll know not to expect too much of Home and it does its job just fine, a cheap and cheerful piece of pure entertainment that maintains attention throughout and (unlike most similar efforts) sticks in the head, albeit only because of its main theme’s similarity to something else.  There are far, far worse ways of spending 40 minutes.

Rating: ***

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