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It seems like a lot of remix maestros have been bursting onto the scene as solo artists lately - Moby, BT, Fatboy Slim, you name it - but few of them have as unique a sound as Australian Rob Dougan sports on his debut album. Having put his unique spin on the works of a number of artists including Kylie Minogue, Dougan discovered a whole new unexpected audience when one of his songs was used very briefly in The Matrix. Remember the “lady in the red dress” training scene where Morpheus demonstrates the dangers of the Agents to Neo? The low-key atmospheric menace leading into that scene is a short excerpt from Dougan’s “Clubbed To Death” single. When The Matrix exposed Dougan’s song to not just a new audience or two, but rabid new audiences, he wisely repeated the move by reworking another of his songs for the soundtrack of The Matrix Reloaded.

That song is “Furious Angels”, also the namesake of Dougan’s first solo collection, and it could hardly sound more different than the beat-heavy movie version (this version strips out everything except Dougan’s vocals and the orchestra). Yes, Rob Dougan sings on several of his songs, his lyrics veering between hope and vengeful spurned love, and his delivery darting from a style I’d describe as “Dylan does ENZSO” to a smoother approach that I describe as “Neil Diamond woke up with laryngitis and sang a big splashy James Bond theme song anyway.” Dougan is not a great vocalist, and when one considers that most of his songs are drenched with the sweet sound of an honest-to-God orchestral backing, his growly, rumbly vocals are even more incongruous. But when one listens to him singing the vengeful vows of “Left Me For Dead” and “Furious Angels”, or the world-weary “Speed Me Toward Death”, it somehow seems right that he didn’t hire someone with smoother pipes. “Speed Me Toward Death” is probably the catchiest of the vocal tracks on here, as it really encapsulates my earlier comment about someone gruff trying to croon a Bond theme - it’s grandiose, morbid, violent, and yet funny in its own bitterly ironic way. It’s also one of the more accessible tracks on Furious Angels, with some funktastic guitar work getting a word in edgewise amid the orchestral splendor. It’s about as close to a perfectly balanced song as Dougan gets here.

But Dougan isn’t all angst and darkness, as “One And The Same” proves. And perhaps the best piece of music on the entire album is the closing number, “Clubbed To Death II”, which bears little resemblance to the other track bearing that name, and musically speaking it’s far, far more interesting. It’s an instrumental with a strange kind of wistful, world-weary hope to it, and a lovely and deceptively quiet piano solo lulls you into a false sense of security that the song’s over. It’s a great little number that I wish was about two or three times longer than it is. And it proves, as does the rest of Furious Angels, one thing: Dougan is ready for a film scoring assignment of his own, not just riding shotgun with Don Davis. Hopefully someone who’s actually making a movie will pick up this hint too and put Dougan on the case, because I’m ready for more where this came from.

1. Prelude (0:44)
2. Furious Angels (6:09)
3. Will You Follow Me (3:52)
4. Left Me For Dead (4:41)
5. I’m Not Driving Anymore (4:37)
6. Clubbed To Death (7:28)
7. There’s Only Me (5:39)
8. Instrumental (4:27)
9. Nothing At All (6:34)
10. Born Yesterday (7:34)
11. Speed Me Towards Death (4:34)
12. Drinking Song (3:59)
13. Pause (0:35)
14. One & The Same (Coda) (5:46)
15. Clubbed To Death II (3:48 - hidden track)

Released by: Cheeky / Warner Bros.
Release date: 2003
Total running time: 70:27

It’s been far too long since Weird Al graced us with his presence on record, though I have a theory as to why this isn’t his fault. I’ll get back to that in a moment though.

Poodle Hat is simultaneously a joy - heck, in some respect, anything Yankovic does is a joy - and a slight disappointment too. The latter feeling stems from a wee bit of repetition. Granted, there are always some things you can count on with Weird Al - he’ll be making fun of whatever’s been big on radio, he’ll more than likely have a polka medley that blends a bunch of disposable hits into a frothy stew of bizarre reinterpretations, and he’s got some of the best musicians on the planet helping him out, because the parody songs wind up sounding almost exactly like the originals, if not better. But here, we’re treated to some other repeated concepts too: now it seems as though a classic rock number will be turned into an only slightly tongue-in-cheek retelling of a recent big-screen hit, and there’s going to be a really long song at the end of the album.

When Running With Scissors rode into the stores on the back of “The Saga Begins”, a retelling of Star Wars Episode I to the tune of Don McLean’s “American Pie”, it was a novel, well-executed idea - and it was right on time, too, arriving just on the heels of the movie with a perfect video to match. Poodle Hat gives us a synopsis of Spider-Man set to the tune of Billy Joel’s “Piano Man”, and hey, it is funny, but it’s not only a year too late, it’s a gag we’ve heard before. Maybe this is a tradition-in-the-making that needs to be rested.

As for the long song, Running With Scissors‘ “Albuquerque” need fear no competition from Poodle Hat’s “Genius In France”, a little riff on the legends of Jerry Lewis’ popularity in a certain European country. It drags on a bit too long. Like “Albuquerque”, “Genius” has a lot of time and melody changes, almost too many to keep track of - it’s like Weird Al’s doing a medley of original songs we’ve never heard before. And it’s not even as long as “Albuquerque” was…but still, it somehow doesn’t trip my trigger, becoming a bit of a “skip track.”

Now, those two complaints aside, the rest of the album is sheer genius no matter what country you’re in. I’m getting to where I like Weird Al’s originals better than his parodies, and here he puts what may be his best original song ever on display: “Hardware Store”. Not just funny, this song is a masterpiece of vocal performance. And I’m not being sarcastic there - over the years, Yankovic has parodied everyone from Michael Jackson to Madonna to R.E.M., and he couldn’t have done this without an incredibly flexible voice to pull it off, but “Hardware Store” blows away anything I’ve yet heard from him. Wow.

“eBay” is a dead-on (topically speaking) parody of both a Backstreet Boys song and everyone’s favorite (and/or least favorite) online auction service. The whole eBay culture is neatly lined up in Weird Al’s sights for this one, from “check my feedback” to the dreaded sniper bids. “A Complicated Song” neatly shreds Avril Lavigne’s Complicated, though in the course of the song, Yankovic goes from being constipated to decapitated. For those of us who instantly filed this song next to Alanis’ “Ironic” in the relevance department, it’s bliss to hear Weird Al spoof it.

The other big treat here is the “Angry White Boy Polka”, taking a bunch of angsty, supposedly hard-hitting songs and running them through the blender. It’s not quite up to the standard of some of Weird Al’s previous polka-fests, but - and this brings me neatly back to my theory of why, aside from a busy directing and producing schedule, Weird Al has been absent from the scene - maybe this is because what’s on top 40 radio lately just hasn’t provided Weird Al with the kind of fodder he needs. So much sampling of older songs, so much forgettable stuff crowds the airwaves these days, maybe it’s taken Al this long to come up with enough material to fill an album. And really, it’s a good album - my big quibbles with it aren’t that major, more along the lines of concerns that a formula may be setting in. As much as Weird Al needs decent music for his parodies to thrive, bad music also needs Weird Al to kick it back into line.

1. Couch Potato (4:20)
2. Hardware Store (3:46)
3. Trash Day (3:13)
4. Party At The Leper Colony (3:40)
5. Angry White Boy Polka (5:05)
6. Wanna B Ur Lovr (6:16)
7. A Complicated Song (3:41)
8. Why Does This Always Happen To Me (4:54)
9. Ode To A Superhero (4:54)
10. Bob (2:31)
11. eBay (3:38)
12. Genius In France (8:56)

Released by: Volcano
Release date: 2003
Total running time: 54:54

The first in a promised trilogy of short EPs of songs-in-progress, Ben Folds’ Speed Graphic sits nicely alongside the equally-cryptically-titled Sunny 16 as a sample of what might be on the way - again, there’s no guarantee that any of these tunes will make it to Folds’ next album.

Speed Graphic kicks off with a jaunty cover of The Cure’s “In Between Days”, a song I never would’ve expected to hear Folds do in a million years. But by the end of the track, he’s made the song his own without sacrificing the frenetic pace of the Cure’s original.

By contrast, “Give Judy My Notice” is one of the better ballads Ben Folds has graced us with in quite a while, though the lyrics take an unusual turn toward the end (and that’s all I’m gonna say). This wouldn’t have been out of place on Rockin’ The Suburbs.

A hoppin’ number that’ll please longtime Folds fans, “Protection” is very much in the “Jackson Cannery” vein. I’m not sure what else to say about this, other than that I experienced a “what the hell?” moment when the song ends on a drum solo. Nothing wrong with that, just that I certainly wasn’t expecting it!

This we follow up with “Dog”, which turns out to be one of my favorite Folds songs in a long time. Maybe it’s my mind subconsciously invoking the comparison based on the subject matter, but I could swear that Folds is trying to summon the spectre of pianist Vince Guaraldi (of Charlie Brown TV special fame). The music hops along in a way that’s just begging for Snoopy to hop right along with it. The lyrics are sung from the dog’s point of view, including trying to figure out why his person is “stuck in a cage with a headrest.” It probably catchier than I can even explain here. There’s a little surprise at the end too.

Wandering back into ballad territory, “Wandering” has all the hallmarks of a last-song-on-the-album track, with an easygoing melody, a slow but steady pace, and it sidetracks into some nice piano solo work. It’s a nice closer for this five-song set, and promises much for Folds’ next full album.

1. In Between Days (2:57)
2. Give Judy My Notice (4:02)
3. Protection (4:39)
4. Dog (4:32)
5. Wandering (5:01)

Released by: Epic
Release date: 2003
Total running time: 21:11

It takes some nerve to try to follow up on a legend whether you’re talking about movies or music, but in this case it’s a double whammy: music for a sequel to an all-time classic movie - a movie which defied convention by taking a pass on an outstanding work-in-progress Alex North score in favor of existing classical and avant-garde choral works. As if 2001 itself wasn’t hard enough to follow up on, how could its sequel’s music hope to compete with the likes of Ligeti and Kachaturian and “The Blue Danube”?

The answer, of course, is that it couldn’t. Composer David Shire didn’t even worry about that, and set about creating a largely electronic score that would fit this movie. (He also wasn’t the first to try: Tony Banks of Genesis almost landed this film as his first movie scoring project, but director Peter Hyams disliked the demos Banks submitted.) Shire’s instincts couldn’t have been more correct. His music from 2010 fits the film’s more modern-action-adventure approach perfectly, while also servicing the story’s need for some mystery and menace. Sure, some of the synth work dates itself - it’s a film score that definitely sounds like it’s from a film released in 1984, though some of those synth-only cues are marvelous: the “Bowman” track never fails to make the hair on the back of my neck tingle. But there are also some awe-inspiring orchestral passages toward the end that not only defy the challenge to follow up on 2001’s classical repertoire - they take the gutsy move of dovetailing with it, as one climactic cue builds up beautifully to a reprise of “Also Sprach Zarathustra”. That epic-length final cue, “Nova” / “New Worlds” / “Also Sprach Zarathustra”, is just about worth the cost of admission alone.

Note that I say “just about,” and with good reason. 2010 was treated to only the briefest of CD releases upon the movie’s general release, way back in the year that Reagan won his second term in office. As a result, there’s a built-in rarity factor that tends to jack the price of 2010 on CD way up - to the tune of almost a hundred dollars for the original U.S. release CD in good shape. It’s a bit unfair, and the 2010 soundtrack is urgently in need of a re-release, even if it’s only as a Film Score Monthly private label pressing; some foreign labels have re-released it more recently. The cassette is easier to get one’s hands on, and in any case, it’s a movie soundtrack worth hearing. Whether or not it’s worth a C-note to hear it, on the other hand, is really in the eye of the beholder.

You’ll notice that we didn’t mention the Andy Summers single version of “2010″ here. And if you hear it, you’ll notice there’s a reason for that. You’ll also be longing for the days of Meco covering Star Wars.

1. 2010 by Andy Summers (5:14)
2. Earth / Space (3:15)
3. Probe (4:15)
4. Bowman (1:46)
5. Reactivating Discovery (2:24)
6. Space Linkup / Earth Fallout (3:58)
7. Visitation / Countdown (5:44)
8. Nova / New worlds / Also Sprach Zarathustra (6:26)
9. New Worlds: Theme From 2010 (2:31)

Released by: A&M
Release date: 1984
Total running time: 36:03