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Cowboy Bebop Soundtrack
Something I should tell you right off the bat is that I know almost nothing about
Cowboy Bebop. I'm about seventy-five percent sure it's a TV show but I might be mistaken, it could be a movie. Or maybe it's both. No idea. I also am relatively sure it's Japanese anime but I might be wrong about that as well. I mention all of this to let you know, dear reader, that I have very little context for this music. All I know is it's a soundtrack that appears to consist mostly, but not entirely, of music by some band or person called Seatbelts. At any rate, I was asked to do this review by alert reader Loathsome Pete so here goes.
The first thing I noticed about this album is that, despite being the soundtrack for something called
Cowboy Bebop, none of the music is actually bebop. In fact, some of it isn't even jazz at all. What it is is a mixed bag of stuff, the best of which is fairly quirky, somewhat jazzy and seems very heavily influenced by 1960s spy film soundtracks. Some of it reminds me of one of my idols, J.G. Thirlwell (Foetus, Steroid Maximus, Wiseblood, etc.), in particular his work on the soundtrack for the Cartoon Network show
Venture Brothers. A lot of it also reminds me of Mexican space-age bachelor pad music maestro Esquivel.
Having never heard this in its intended context, I have no idea how well it works as soundtrack music, but I would guess it's pretty good. As an album it's a little patchy, as the mood drifts all over the place from song to song, but that's to be expected from tracks that were not originally intended to be heard one after another like this. It certainly starts off with a bang with "Tank!", a track that's evocative of some super-exciting spy movie opening credits. There are a number of tracks in a similar vein that I enjoyed a great deal as well, such as "Rush", "Cat Blues", "Too Good Too Bad", and the slightly John Zorn-esque "Bad Dog No Biscuits". And then there are some that are quite a bit different that I also really enjoyed, from the almost Brazilian sounding "The Egg and I" to a couple of hybrid-type tracks such as "Space Lion" and "Piano Black" which combine jazz elements with loops and synthesized sounds. Unfortunately, this album also has its share of missteps as well. These range from it's empty attempts at rootsy blues and/or western type stuff to the truly awful song "Rain" which sounds like every horrible hard rock 1980s cartoon theme song you can think of, only somehow much worse.
So is it any good? I say yes. Even though I only really enjoyed 50% or 60% of the tracks, that 50% or 60% is some sweet, swinging stuff daddy-o! Who wants a martini?
