One of the most exciting pieces of news for years for us soundtrack fans was Lukas Kendall's May 1998 announcement that he was to release a series of CDs under the banner of Film Score Monthly Silver Age Classics. Each release would be limited to 3000 copies, and released exclusively through his magazine and website, not available in stores. The first release was this, a Jerry Goldsmith double-header.

Stagecoach had previously only been available as an album of a re-recording of dubious quality conducted by Alexander Courage, so this album marks the first time that the original soundtrack recording has been made available. However, sonics are poor - while Nick Redman and his team have eradicated all hiss from the recordings, this also results in noticeable distortion at times, particularly when the music gets loud.

The music itself is remarkably low-key for a Goldsmith western; it's folksy Americana, in the style of Aaron Copland. A result of this is that it sometimes gets so quiet that I have to physically walk over to my speakers to check that it's still on! The louder sections, when they arrive, are worth the wait - "A New Passenger", for example, is a great, bouncy action track, more in the style of Elmer Bernstein's western scores. My one complaint is that it lacks a dominant theme - while there is a theme, I doubt that many people will be able to remember it once the CD has finished. (Oh, and there's another complaint - that song is just awful, and really should never have been included!)

Following Stagecoach is a lengthy suite from The Loner, a television series starring the late Lloyd Bridges from 1965. The music, while also for a western, is very different - because of the more restricted budget, there are no strings, so Goldsmith wrote it exclusively for brass, percussion, and a variety of weirder instruments - accordians, banjos, marimba, whips...

The heroic main theme (derived, the liner notes explain, from a secondary theme in Lonely are the Brave) is classic. This CD includes two long tracks (each a suite of music from the two episodes of the show that Goldsmith scored), plus a track of the theme itself with the kind of cheesy narration that has me in stitches every time I hear it. The sound quality on The Loner is, surprisingly, better than on Stagecoach.

The production values are, as you'd expect from FSM, immense - the liner notes (by Jeff Bond and Jon Burlingame) are comprehensive to say the least, and there are numerous stills from the film and tv show, plus a picture of Goldsmith conducting from the mid-60s. (And, maybe it's just me, but don't you think the person at the top left on the back cover of the booklet looks just like Michael Palin?)

Not perhaps as good as some of the releases that have followed it in the series, but solid enough nonetheless. And FSM's Silver (and subsequently Golden) Age Classics series has produced some of the best film music releases in the period since it started.