by Al on 3/22/2005
favorite track: 13
 
James Horner's music for The Devil's Own is one of his most overlooked scores, and deserves a second glance. While this score could be passed off as simply "the other Horner score" during 1997 (the year "My Heart Will Go On" plagued radio stations), The Devil's Own is an admirable album, if for no other reason than it isn't titanic in length or scope.

The album is full with familiar celtic music and many of the composer's oft-repeated motifs, but whereas Titanic reveled in widescreen shots of the mammoth ship and a melodramatic love story, the plot of The Devil's Own is much more intimate, and Horner's score follows suit, offering a subtle scoring that is more melodic than recent art-dramas such as House of Sand and Fog yet not as overblown as his larger projects.

The celtic music here seems much more appropriate. The main theme sounds like an adaptation of a traditional celtic tune but rather is Horner's own creation. "There Are Flowers Growing Upon The Hill" is sung first in Gaelic for the main titles and then in English for the end credits, and it is certainly one of the composer's strongest songs, clearly having no pop sensibilities or top-of-the-chart aims.

Horner effectively weaves this theme throughout his score, providing upbeat versions in "Launching the Boat" and "The Pool Hall," and even utilizing it as suspense material in "The New World." The suspense cues, actually, are the only drawbacks to the listening experience.

"Ambush," with its brooding synths and rumbling percussion, seems snatched from his Braveheart score from 2 years earlier, and "Rory's Arrest" is built around high-pitched repeated synth chords that would sound at home in the composer's earlier 80s efforts; while this would fit well in one of his scores from that period, the synth clashes with his orchestral celtic-based work here.

What makes this album such a strong listen is that most of the tracks are quite short, and despite the suspense cues, they don't tend to drag at all; the album itself is forty-six minutes and this includes a song by Dolores O'Riordan of The Cranberries.

The cue "Quiet Goodbyes" is particularly notable. It's a subtle flute-based performance of the main theme and in its minute-long length manages to convey as much emotion as some of his sprawling drawn-out cues. The finale "Going Home," the longest track of the score at seven minutes, is perfect in its length, providing a moving climax that immediately yet smoothly segues into the final performance of Horner's song, offering an appropriate denouement.

While the celtic music is familiar and the Hornerisms are still present, he Devil's Own is a tight and mostly well-paced album that is easy to digest, even for the most hesitant Horner fans. It has become fairly scarce, no doubt sunk by the sales of the Titanic album, but it is a solid listen worth seeking out.