Adapted from Candice Millard’s book Destiny of the Republic, Death by Lightning is a wonderfully quirky telling of the election and presidency of James Garfield, played by Michael Shannon, with Matthew Macfadyen as his assassin Chares Guiteau. The two leads and several of the supporting cast are outstanding – it’s one of my favourite miniseries of the year.
Ramin Djawadi didn’t seem like the most natural choice of composer to me – I’m struggling to think of anything in his past that would have lent itself towards the balance of serious drama with sophisticated wit on display in the show, but it just goes to show you shouldn’t pre-judge these things because he has in fact turned in probably his most mature and certainly one of his most impressive scores to date.
It opens with “Prove My Worth”, a warm and noble but very brief piece of string-laden Americana, before guitar and piano add a different feel to “The Man from Ohio”, quite a chirpy and rhythmic piece not dissimilar to something Thomas Newman might have written. The darkly comedic theme for Guiteau is introduced in “Daily Theocrat” – there’s a little macabre feel buried deep inside it which perfectly mirrors Macfadyen’s performance. Then after this we have “Meeting the President”, which kind of skirts around that old patriotic folk music sound.
That’s all in the first four cues and while the sound palette has by now been established, there is still plenty of material left for Djawadi to unveil. “The Story of a Hero” is a genuinely touching piece for piano and strings, slowly building an emotional wave, before a new theme is introduced in “It’s a Deadlock”, built as an action track before being heard in very different guises in the martial “A Big Game” and as a suspense device to open “The Nominee”, which then becomes considerably more expansive as it opens out. I’m not fully sold in the electronic manipulation in the latter (it seems a little out of place) but otherwise it’s another fine piece.
“Show Me a Better Man” is another track where Djawadi shows a really deft touch, again managing to balance a very slight comedic feel with a serious dramatic thrust – and a great melody at the heart of it, too. And it just keeps coming – a swelling feeling of destiny in “A Sound Investment”, a serious take on the main theme in “You Will Have No Voice”. In truth, the composer keeps things interesting throughout – a core of great ideas and memorable tunes are interwoven with one another to great effect.
There’s great drama in “A Flair of Hope”, a showy and very satisfying track; a fascinating kind of jazz fusion feel in the tense “Broken Promises”, especially from the muted trumpet; a buzzing sense of importance in the percussive “History Will Remember Us”, which brings back that action theme in a series of string runs; I absolutely love the low-end piano figure in “Friends in Politics”, a frustrating brief but particularly classy piece.
The rousing “A President for the People” is tremendous; and its tonal flipside, the dark and menacing “A Special Purpose”, has so much going on under the surface. “Stop the Vote” is a terrific example of the composer blending old-fashioned techniques with more modern ones, the drama heightening throughout. There is another very moving piece as we near the conclusion, “A Place in History” offering everything you might expect something with such a title to offer.
As I’ve mentioned, the demands of this show were unusual for the composer and Djawadi has risen to meet them and then some, providing a score of great class. The one shame is that he had to write so many very short pieces, there are times when momentum is building in one direction or other and has to be cut short. But still, I’m not sure I’ve heard anything with quite this sophistication from the composer before (creating the hints of the period at the same time through the feel of some of the Americana and combining this with the political drama and sense of destiny) and it’s an album I will be listening to a lot in the years ahead.
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