A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night OST
There’s sometimes a degree of one-upmanship with foreign-language films and scores. Oh, you don’t like subtitles? What a pleb. You aren’t into the very small cross-section of world music this soundtrack introduces you to? So small minded. A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night is a black and white, Farsi-language vampire Western-cum-love story in which Bakersfield, CA doubles for a fictional Iranian town. And its cool and hugely eclectic soundtrack, curated by the film’s director Ana Lily Amirpour, no doubt benefits from the exotic mysteries of being predominantly sung in a foreign language – Bei Ru’s smooth ethno-pop and Radio Tehran’s Middle Eastern indie-rock may, for example, be entirely less appealing if we knew what on earth they were going on about.
The same can’t be said for Federale’s excellently cinematic contributions, however, which range from some dusty desert chapel’s call to prayer to neo-horror drones, cymbals and high-and-lonesome Morricone work and triumphant Mexican brass. Kiosk too have got some neat grooves and noir croons, the noodling vocal in “Yarom Bia” sounding like like Bowie at his most flamboyant while also borrowing the evocative wheezing of Yann Tiersen’s accordion on the soundtrack’s opener. Keeping the variety high, Free Electric Band offer up the dirty throb of tech-house while Farah brings the trademark seductive synths of the Italians Do It Better label. And then there’s the rather unwelcome inclusion of preening post-punk poppers White Lies. Quite how it fits in the film’s sequence I dread to think but “Death” clunks here on an otherwise impressive and atmospheric selection.
~The A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night soundtrack is out now on Dealth Waltz.~