Promised Land OST Review

• 9th May 2013

Composer: Danny Elfman

Danny Elfman is back working for Gus Van Sant on his latest drama which sees Matt Damon’s corporate stooge attempting to buy up farm land for development.

Elfman has always been more than a competent composer. The issue really here is that (like we have complained about so often with regular Hollywood composers) he isn’t delivering anything terribly new.

Many of the tracks here you could swear were nicked from some of his previous work with Tim Burton; But to go on and on about that would see us becoming repetitive ourselves. But even if it is fairly paint by numbers, even on semi-auto-pilot, Elfman can still deliver music that rests well in the ears.

Looking at the work by itself and ignoring past works, this is very easy listening. For a drama it perhaps has a few quirks out of the ordinary that you might expect for straight storytelling. There is still a lot of gloomy fairytale-esque attributes to the work here to suggest that Elfman is trying to play ball with what perhaps is on screen. But as a solo piece of work fans can sit back and relax and let it glide over them.

Steven Hurst