Soundtrack Review: Hot Tub Time Machine OST
A nostalgic musical trip back in time to the era of leg-warmers & backcombed hair...
For me, my love affair with the cinema has always overlapped with my passion for music, and I am invariably interested in the way music and visuals interact to various effects on the screen. With that in mind, and because the movie comes out next week, the first subject of my attention is the Hot Tub Time Machine OST (available here now).
Sadly, the cover is attrocious- the badly cut and pasted headshots of the lead foursome superimposed onto a hot tub is just terribly sloppy and you have to suspect that the job would have been better achieved with the name of the movie alone, emblazoned perhaps on a hot tub background. Luckily, you dont judge a soundtrack by its cover, and what it inside is far more pleasing.
The whole 'Hot Tub Time Machine' project is steeped liberally in retro- in fact the movies facebook page perpetually highlights the fact as soon as there is even a whiff of retrospection in current affairs- so I expected to be greeted by an 80s Greatest Hits compilation, with the same old familiar faces. That wouldnt actually have been a problem, I welcome 80s music to my bossom with its warm comforting familiarity, and it is usually the best examples that tend to make it on that kind of compilation. In reality I was quite pleasantly surprised by the inclusion of lesser known songs, and less obvious tunes from recognisable 80s legends like David Bowie and New Order, and I cant wait to see how they fit in with the events of the film when it hits British screens next week.
The line-up reads as follows...
1. Louder Than a Bomb (Back Into Time) Public Enemy 2. Perfect Way (edited version) Scritti Politti 3. The Safety Dance Men Without Hats 4. What You Need Inxs 5. Modern Love David Bowie 6. I Will Dare The Replacements 7. Push It Salt N Pepa 8. Bring on the Dancing Horses Echo and the Bunnymen 9. Save It For Later The Beat 10. True Spandau Ballet 11. Jessies Girl Craig Robinson 12. Bizarre Love Triangle (Shep Pettibone remix) New Order 13. Once In a Lifetime Talking Heads 14. Home Sweet Home Motley Crue 15. Lets Get It Started Craig Robinson
The mix is great, with electronic classics rubbing shoulders with power pop ballads, and Salt N Pepper and Public Enemy offering some biting grime in there as well. Mypersonal highlights are the excellent Men Without Hats track "Safety Dance" (which is also the star of a very good 'Family Guy' skit) and Motley Crue's "Home Sweet Home". "Safety Dance" in particular says everything about the 80s musical climate, with its heavy reliance on synths, electronica and an affected flat voice in the style of David Byrne and Phil Oakley, and to celebrate its majesty, here is the video. It is one of the most ludicrously inexplicable pieces of film I have ever seen, and features some gratuitous little people for no reason other than mismanaged "comic effect"- if you can get over the head scratching confusion of it all, the music is just wonderful.
The very thought of Craig Robinson singing at all would ordinarily curdle my most inner fluids, so to have him here covering The Black Eyed Peas' "Let's Get It Started" and Rick Springfield's "Jessie's Girl" is not all that welcome. The humour attached to Robinson singing in 'The Office' is of course down to the fact that he is committed and passionate, but ultimately wholly terrible at it, so I can understand the appeal to the makers of a comedy vehicle of having him sing in the film, and offering two whole songs as part of the soundtrack. However, adding production and presenting the songs even semi-seriously (in terms of the dilligent fidelity to the originals) robs Robinson of that comic effect somewhat and the songs stuck out like a sore thumb against the 80s classics around them.
If the intent is to offer a little of the film in the soundtrack, to make sure it isnt just a compilation with the title slapped crudely onto it, then the inclusion of the Robinson versions is not enirely unwelcome, but there could have been more of an imprint on the line-up: in my experience soundtracks can go either way when it comes to including snippets of the film- taking the heavy approach of say a 'Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels' or a 'Human Traffic' soundtrack or they can merely be a collection of music from the film (whether originally recorded or not). The problem with the former approach arises wen you take the album and upload it to your iPod and hit shuffle: in amongst your various eclectic tunes, random quotes from movies pop up, and are largely skipped, as out of context the mean very little, and as I said, the latter can be deemed merely an exploitative quest to make as much money from the movie as possible by putting out a vaguely linked compilation with the name tagged on.
Such is the nature of my wanton enjoyment of all things musically 80s that I would have preferred a straight Music From.. compilation, minus the Robinson versions, giving more space for lush 80s tuneage.
Although there are a lot of good inclusions on the album, there are also a few glaring absences. Surely such a retro piece should have been interested in presenting a definitive look at the 1980s musical scene (albeit without being too obvious- hence the inclusion of Inxs but not "I Need You Tonight") to match the movie, so the conspicuous absence of anything from Human League is a mistake as far as I'm concerned. Likewise, while it may be a regular occurence for the music chosen to embellish a movie's trailer not to appear on the soundtrack, the decision to leave out Dead or Alive's "You Spin Me Round", which was chosen with pitch perfect precision to mark the reveal during the trailer seems like an unfortunate oversight.
Had I been pulling the strings (and just because I love playlisting in general), I'd have offered the following playlist...
1. Vienna Ultravox 2. Goody Two Shoes- Adam Ant 3. Superfreak Rick James 4. Escape (The Pina Colada Song)- Rupert Holmes 5. Goodbye Horses Q Lazzarus 6. Criticize- Alexander O'Neal 7. Rock It Herbie Hancock 8. Love Will Tear Us Apart Joy Division 9. The Look of Love - ABC 10. Gold Spandau Ballet 11. Tempation Heaven 17 12. The Model- Kraftwerk 13. And She Was Talking Heads 14. Detroit Rock City Kiss 15. Fight This Feeling REO Speedwagon
So, whether you are coming to these songs new, or rediscovering their unbridled awesomeness all over again, the soundtrack gives a decent account of itself, offering a great cross-section of music from a time when popular music heavily involved keytars, saxophone solos, and drum beats. There is something here for every musical sub-culture from the 80s from post-punk to bleeding heart rock ballad, and the one lowlight (the two Craig Robinson tracks) will no doubt find more favour with other listeners and fans coming to the soundtrack having already watched the film.