Pirates Of The Caribbean - At World's End - Various Artists

The soundtrack for PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END could have been a three-hour dirge of overly-orchestrated fussing, I consider my ears fortunate that HANS ZIMMER sliced the whole thing down to an hour for the CD merchandise release.

Now, I'm not a mean-spirited person and I have more than a few of HANS ZIMMER's soundtracks to prove I'm a fan. It's just, poor HANS, dear HANS! Try as he might, he's not a good inheritor of ...
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The score for PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END is the final musical chapter in an alleged trilogy, that began back in 2003 in the hands of KLAUS BADELT with PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL. BADELT's score served up a taut set of themes and thundering action-scene orchestrations that were as obscenely infectious as the film itself. I'd be sitting on the bus humming away to it for twenty minutes before I'd notice ... more

The soundtrack for PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END could have been a three-hour dirge of overly-orchestrated fussing, I consider my ears fortunate that HANS ZIMMER sliced the whole thing down to an hour for the CD merchandise release.

Now, I'm not a mean-spirited person and I have more than a few of HANS ZIMMER's soundtracks to prove I'm a fan. It's just, poor HANS, dear HANS! Try as he might, he's not a good inheritor of other composers' work.

This, generally, isn't a bad thing - see STANLEY KUBRICK's shafting of ALEX NORTH's score in favour of posthumous contribution by JOHANN and RICHARD STRAUSS (their brother Levi was unavailable for comment) amongst others for 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. Great idea, excellent soundtrack and probably the most work those guys've seen since the mid-19th century. It also managed to set a trend for the sequel, which is where my argument goes up a few gears.

The score for PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END is the final musical chapter in an alleged trilogy, that began back in 2003 in the hands of KLAUS BADELT with PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL. BADELT's score served up a taut set of themes and thundering action-scene orchestrations that were as obscenely infectious as the film itself. I'd be sitting on the bus humming away to it for twenty minutes before I'd notice my player was out of power or someone'd elbowed my earphone plug out of the socket.

That may appear purely inconsequential and completely irrelevant but, trust me, this digression does have a point - STAR WARS, INDIANA JONES, SUPERMAN and LORD OF THE RINGS are the only other soundtracks to switch on my ability to hum like a tunelessly loud polyphonic ringtone. In my mind that means the CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL soundtrack had something. It had themes! Rich, flowing, identifiable themes extending beyond the oft remixed HE'S A PIRATE.

Now, you'd expect any right-minded individual to listen to that soundtrack and go: 'Right, I'll have a bit of that. And some of this. Got to have a bit of that too.' as the magic of a subtley reworked theme or ten has made JOHN WILLIAMS and HOWARD SHORE a packet. Not HANS. He's special like that. His score for PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN'S CHEST can be partially excused as an impression (in the embossing sense) of creative self-identity. But, you'd think that by now he'd be past the stage of leaving 'This is the property of HANS ZIMMER' stickers all over the incidental music; letting the end credits stay up late with a party horn and DJ TIESTO and get with the programme of making a score that gets back to basics.

Admittedly those basics were set when the first film was a no-hoper, not-a-chance, sneak release which managed to slaughter some three-hour-long guaranteed box office smashes. It's ironic then that the resonating feel to the score for PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END owes more to the establishment it trampled all over than the musical identity of the first film that started the march in.

-- TRACK LISTING --

1) HOIST THE COLOURS

2) SINGAPORE

3) AT WIT'S END

4) MULTIPLE JACKS

5) I SEE DEAD PEOPLE IN BOATS

6) THE BRETHEREN COURT

7) PARLAY

8) CALYPSO

9) WHAT SHALL WE DIE FOR

10) I DON'T THINK NOW IS THE BEST TIME

11) ONE DAY

12) DRINK UP ME HEARTIES

I am a soundtrack nut. I own something in the region of nine hundred of the wretched things. It's a habit, it's an addiction; one that makes you attuned to listening to tracks entitled 'Fred walks into wall' which WILL last for two minutes and during that time all you will hear is two bars of saxophone and a loud thump of kettle drums. And I *really* would rather listen to 'Fred walks into wall' than half of the music on this disk.

Barring AT WIT'S END, ONE DAY and DRINK UP ME HEARTIES the score for PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END is guttless and uninspired. The classical orchestrations are just that - classical. They don't conjure up whatever scene in the movie they're from in your head while you're listening to it. They don't even evoke a character or a quote line. They're just there. Luckily they're only there for a third of the time they could've been, which is a blessing.

Unluckily that's part of the fun of listening to film scores. Yes, they deserve to be appreciated in their own right. But you shouldn't need a prompt from the track title before you can recall the moment in the movie where the track was playing. Especially not when you saw the movie in the afternoon, bought the soundtrack twenty minutes later and had it blasting out of your stereo speakers within the hour.

Bad HANS, no biscuit.

So what, if anything, is wrong with it? If you like notes that linger long after they should've been stopped, single-movie themes where the music directs the listener to a place instead of to a character (imagine INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE without the INDIANA JONES THEME popping up every five minutes of score or so in a variety of keys and tempo switches - and you've got it) and a frequently mobile bassline which is always a beat out of sync with a healthy listener's heart - you'll like it. It is a very mature soundtrack scoring from an accomplished composer. Sadly, it's not quite as enduring as HOWARD SHORE's score for THE RETURN OF THE KING and it's difficult to feel enveloped by the sound ZIMMER is creating.

I find this extremely disappointing as ZIMMER has had no problems in the past with scores for BATMAN BEGINS, THE ROCK and GLADIATOR when it comes to opening the top draw, standing on it and shouting at the brass and percussion section to speed it up and turn it up. Yet this is his precise problem with PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END - it is underpaced and, in extremes, maudlin when it could be genuinely evocative of emotion.

The good bits are few and far between but they are worth the price of hitting iTunes for individually instead of buying the full album. The two originals are the tracks AT WIT'S END and ONE DAY which bypass the tinkly wishy-washy chords most scores pass-off as high romance and heads straight for passionate. AT WIT'S END especially, I have road tested (floor tested?) this track on a tango at dance class and oh *yes* does this work for 'passionate'. After three minutes of an eight minute track your knees and ankles will not be pleased if you do decide to hit it with the tango test. ONE DAY is also more uplifting than romantic, in the same way JOHN BARRY's score for OUT OF AFRICA swoops and rises with the visual expanse of African savannah and low-flying biplanes, ONE DAY is possessed by wind, waves and hulking galleons. Yes, another very nice one indeed.

Finally there's DRINK UP ME HEARTIES, which is an overture combining many of the major themes from PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END with revisions on THE MEDALLION CALLS and HE'S A PIRATE themes from the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL score. It's just a shame that with the soundtrack, as with the film, you have to wait until the end to hear them.

-- PACKAGING --

Parting with £12.99 at HMV will get you one circle of CD audio plastic in a hinged perspex box. There's paper inserts and a booklet too but let's start with the circle of plastic...

The disk decals play up the film's Far Eastern theme with two red dragons on black base keeping the design simple.

The inserts and cover design keep to a fog bound theme. The track listing on the back is very simple to read and JOHNNY DEPP with a sword on the cover is very easy on the eye.

The booklet is a non-essential. Most of the promotional and making-of photographs have already been around the internet a few dozen times - if you're a fan you will have seen and right-clicked long before now. And the writing offers up the usual insight into the creative process for this score.

Overall the packaging is as unexciting as the rest of the product. However, unlike the rest of the product, the packaging was one place where DISNEY could have excelled themselves and those of us who still buy little plastic circles to listen to music on *could* have had something dandy. Metal tin shaped like a coin, anybody?

Forget it, you don't even get a rubber Kraken.

-- CONCLUSION --

The music isn't as good as it could have been; the packaging is extremely utilitarian and there's no DVDi or web interactive goodies hiding but, it could be worse. There could've been a few techno remixes lurking instead.

If you're a fan of the film itself, you'll love it. If you're a fan of soundtracks you've probably heard this kind of audio cocktail a few times before; it will fail to impress. If you're a general music fan; buy the score for PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL instead. 

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