Mr.Eyore's Full Review: Until the End of the World by Original Soundtrack
Wim Wenders is a brilliant European director – probably German or Swedish or something –, with twenty films to his credit, including such classics as Paris, Texas, Wings of Desire, Buena Vista Social Club, and The Million Dollar Hotel. I’ve never seen anything he’s directed.
Most of all, I have never seen his movie Until the End of The World. But I’m sure it’s real good and stuff. I just don’t watch many movies by the ferners any more. I’m not opposed to them – the ferners and their movies – and I theoretically approve of everything they do. It’s just that, as I get older, and the grind of daily life begins to wear me down, when I stumble upon a few hours I can kill, and the kitty’s already dead, I like me some movies with lots o’ ‘splosions.
Unless the ferner movie has lots of sex, like y tu mama tambien or The Story of “O” which I’ll watch until the kitty’s dead, then I fall asleep.
None of that brings me much embarrassment. We like what we like and nowadays that’s what I like. What brings me embarrassment and shame is that I am now willing to purchase SOUNDTRACKS. Never would have done that in the cool, mullet-sporting days of my youth, when I had some damn standards. Among those standards was that if an album wasn’t worth listening to from beginning to end straight through, it wasn’t worth owning. So, you know, I had no problem buying Zeppelin’s In Through the Out Door, man, because it rawked! But Icicle Works? Maybe. If it was in the 99 cent bin.
Somehow, soundtracks seemed like just a complete betrayal of the whole artistic ... ah hell, I don’t even know. But it seemed wrong to spend money that would go to a bunch of bands that couldn’t manage to string together but one song good enough for a movie. This is why The Simple Minds is the devil.
Anyway, I got over it. I bought the soundtrack to Until the End of The World for the U2 song that takes its name from the film. “Until the End of The World” is one of the last songs U2 produced in what I like to refer to as the pre-Fly era. The Edge’s guitar work still had the jittery chord changes that defined U2's sound through their Joshua Tree album, and Bono hadn’t yet started to try to show that he could do weird stuff with his vocals, like sing in falsetto.
A lot of the album has the tense, haunting feel of a David Lynch film, beginning with The Talking Heads’ “Sax and Violins,” strangely one of the few songs by this band that still gets some regular radio play, even though it was never a hit for them. REM’s “Fretless” has an equally haunting quality to it, like their “Night Swimming” off the Automatic for the People album. The tense restraint of Stipe’s vocal echo behind a simple piano, guitar and violins can be a lovely thing.
Much of that restraint, and all of that tenseness, is present throughout the album, but most particularly on Elvis Costello’s “Days” and Depeche Mode’s re-working of their “Death’s Door” with a stand-up bass, jazz drums and vibraphone into a rather affecting hymn. Likewise with Crime & The City Solution’s dead-on Leonard Cohen turn, “The Adversary.”
If any theme runs through the album, it would seem to be ripples, echos and vibrations. Every song seems to use some kind of note stretching technique or instrument. Julee Cruise’s “Summer Kisses, Winter Tears, is a run of the mill torch song, rendered spooky by the use of slide guitar. Neneh Cherry’s “Move With Me (Dub)” is similarly tweaked with hollow, distant synth-created raindrops. Lou Reed’s “What’s Good” is laden with guitar feedback behind his typical, spoken word style and faux-deep poetry. Patti Smith’s “It Takes Time,” also a spoken word piece, is backed by a slow, distant, tribal drum and two, sustained, bent notes.
All and all, I sorta like this soundtrack album. Although it’s essentially a rock album, it’s got kind of a spooky, atmospheric groove to it, and I imagine it’s the sort of thing that would make me feel cool and eclectic to have playing during a small dinner party, where people might say things like, “Wow, what is this? It’s so cool and atmospheric.” And I would say, “Oh this? It’s just some foreign film movie soundtrack. Some Vim Venders thing I think.” And they would say, “Wow, you’ve got such eclectic taste. I’m am so glad I’m friends with you because maybe some of your cool will rub off on me.”
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