In its own way, Inherent Vice is as subtly and carefully crafted as Greenwood's other scores for Anderson's films, but its wit and heart make it special in its own right.
The soundtrack for Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice, a film based on Thomas Pynchon's 2009 novel, gives composer and Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood a chance to indulge his inner Hollywood romantic.
Inherent Vice, taking place in the wilds of urban California, is a sunny noir—a blanc, if you want—and Greenwood pours it on, using spacious oboe and lugubrious strings that match Sportello’s mindset and undercut the convoluted quadruple-crosses and blackouts of Sportello’s investigation. The Densmore-tinged and spacey “Spooks,” featuring Joanna Newsom’s low-slung (and surprisingly low-register) Beat-boxing, nails the feeling of both Pynchon and ... read more