by Al on 2/20/2005
favorite track: 1
 
While playing the Xbox game, the music of Fable struck this listener as feeling grand and cinematic - especially with Elfman's contribution of the opening theme - but on album, the score is no doubt that for a video game.

The gameplay for the console game is open-ended, so the music follows suit; this is both its strong and weak point. With film scores, a composer is restricted by the length of the scene and the exact actions being performed within it; however, with this free-roaming RPG, composer Shaw is able to go at his own pace. This gives the stronger cues a pleasing fluidity, but the weaker cues suffer from this length.

"Bowerstone" begins as a lively piece for plucked strings but wears out its welcome far before it concludes at four-and-a-half minutes, and "Temple of Light," the only synthesized piece, seems to cheapen the whole affair.

The strongest track on the album, of course, is Elfman's heroic main theme, which sounds like an extension of his Spiderman theme. It has a depth and complexity which unfortunately causes Shaw's more simple orchestration to seem shallow.

Nearly half of Shaw's score, however, still manages to provide a strong, rewarding listen. "Oakvale" is a gorgeous choir-laden theme that uses Elfman's main motif, and it sounds like a cue Elfman himself might have written in the 80s. In fact, Shaw not only uses this main motif in different aspects of his score but he also manages to imitate an early-Elfman sound; in his only battle cue, "Arena," he pulls off an admirable impersonation of early Elfman action music.

Unfortunatly, the album doesn't provide the satisfying sense of closure one might get from a film score. The closing tracks "Guild" and "Fresco Dome" are lovely pieces for choir, but they are merely the same theme; the first one is performed by men, the second by women. With a ten-minute length between them, they just become repetitive.

Fans of Elfman, the Xbox game, or video game soundtracks will surely want to give this disc a spin, but during the entire length of the album, listeners will probably discover that this fantasy score is only half-fantastic.