From Norwegian director André Øvredal, Passenger follows a young couple on a road trip – who unknowingly pick up a rather unwelcome passenger of the demonic kind. Øvredal is known for his horror films (his most recent before this being The Last Voyage of the Demeter) and genre fans have reacted well to the picture.
How wonderful it is to have a new score from the legendary Christopher Young – he’s scored every type of film of course, but there’s no doubting what he’s most associated with and that’s horror. From grand gothic melodrama to terrifying musique concrète he’s scored them in what seems like every conceivable way possible and it’s to his great credit that despite that he still finds new things to say every time.
As is quite common for the composer, the soundtrack album is very thoughtfully put together to maximise the listening experience rather than duplicate the music as heard in the film – the “from and inspired by” wording on the cover giving away that some of the music we can hear here was written just for the album – and while it may not be to everyone’s taste, there’s no denying that Young has once again come up with a singular vision and executed it without compromise.
There are two aspects to this music – a “Prelude” and three tracks titled “Passenger” are the first. The former is predominantly string-led and immediately sets up great tension with its dissonance and ironically its calm; and this carries over to an extent to the latter, but the composer also adds all sorts of textures (both acoustic and electronic) in a quest to terrify. In the second “Passenger” track some of the vocal effects are really not like anything I’ve heard before.
The second aspect are four tracks titled “St. Christopher”, which alternate with the above – significantly easier on the ears it has to be said, these feature pretty stunning liturgical choral work. It’s very much religioso and easy to picture sitting listening to it in a cathedral (something rather less easy with the other music) – hearing this kind of polyphonic a capella music in a film score is extremely unusual (perhaps Morricone did it a few times – he did most things a few times) and hearing it done this well even more so.
The brilliance of the thing comes – of course – in the execution of the contrast between the two extremes of style. As an album, it is continually shocking whenever the crossover from one to the other occurs – and because of the way it’s constructed, the continued sense of unease from the instrumental tracks manages to carry over into the choral ones despite their beauty – you’re always on edge, not quite sure whether you can commit to bathing in the religious glory.
The ability to write music that is on its own terms genuinely scary is a rare one – there’s no doubt that Christopher Young is the master of it. This is yet another album of music which demonstrates there still are new ways he can find of doing his thing – be warned that half this album is completely unsettling and really very challenging – but ultimately what a reward it provides.
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