Norwegian Wood

Jonny Greenwood's second movie score has surfaced as a CD in Japan, and it seems set to be released sooner or later to real people in England and stuff. Never to be outdone, however, trolling the web has proved successful, and I've nabbed myself a free copy. The soundtrack, which includes some old CAN classics such as Mary Mary So Contrary, was made for the Japanese film adaptation of Norwegian Wood, a novel I haven't read by Haruki Murakami (itself titled after The Beatles' track). 'Norwegian Wood' does sound like the name for a blue powder one might find on the top shelf of a secluded shack in the souks of Marrakesh, alongside things like ground rhino horn. Nevertheless, there are moments of supreme beauty on the album, even to the ears of a blost fairly unfamiliar with classical music. The track, I'll Come See You Again, for example, echoes the most ambitious and soaring tracks from Greenwood's previous score for There Will Be Blood. What stuck out from the soundtrack, however, was the track Be Good and Stay Quiet, an unusual piece, firstly because it employs a guitar, but primarily because it reminds me of something quite specific. When I posed this to The Dutton he suggested it sounded something like the first ten seconds of Radiohead's Jigsaws Falling Into Place, but admitted he wasn't fully content with this answer. Reliable and long-serving to the Radiohead cause as The Dutton is, I was rather surprised to find myself alone on this one. To me it sounds exactly like the chords of Thom Yorke’s as yet unrecorded song, The Present Tense, so much so that it raises interesting questions about the song’s origin. Indeed, before the second and final performance of this track in Boston earlier this year, Thom dedicated the song to his band-mate; “This is for Jonny”, he said. Was the dedication motivated by a sense of indebtedness to Jonny for composing the piece? Was it motivated by Jonny himself who so likes the track that he’s created his own rendition for a movie score? Either way, it’s a powerful track in its own right, and well-suited as an advertisement for the score as a whole. Seek it out.