With a portfolio that includes such ironic Generation X anthems as “Song For The Dumped”, “Rockin’ The Suburbs” and collaborations with William Shatner and Weird Al Yankovic, it may be easy to pigeonhole Ben Folds as a wacky alt-rock guy, and for a while, even he might have been content with that label. But his latest album, Songs For Silverman, is a bit less loaded down with that almost prerequisite irony – it’s a finely crafted, mature collection that, while not without moments of humor, acknowledges that the artist (and, perhaps, his fan base) is growing up.

There are several standouts among the introspective set of songs here; “Bastard” laments how we all get more set in our ways and inflexible as we get older; this song really sets a lot of the album’s tone – it’s steeped in the pure pop songwriting and performance sensibilities of the 1970s, the age of Carole King and James Taylor and Billy Joel and pre-African-percussion-obsessed Paul Simon. I realize that the Billy Joel comparison is nothing new where Ben Folds is concerned, but the comparison has evolved beyond the superficial one-man-and-his-piano similarities here.

“You To Thank”, “Trusted” and “Landed” are further examples of Folds’ rooted-in-the-70s style for this album, being a particular combination of lush and bluesy at the same time, with “Landed” being possibly the best thing on the album and a wise (yet unconventional) choice for a lead single. “Jesusland” is a slightly ironic travelogue through the American midwest with some nice string work and great vocal harmonies.

For those fans who, like myself, eagerly snatched up Folds’ three between-albums solo EPs in 2003 and 2004, Songs For Silverman contains only one of those songs: a surprisingly earnest, country-fried rendition of “Give Judy My Notice”. I was taken aback to hear this particular song re-recorded with pedal steel guitar, but at the same time, Folds’ own inclination toward a southern twang makes it authentic, and I quickly grew to like this version better.

Another highlight of the whole album is “Time”, a song that really made me appreciate what a fantastic voice Folds has. I’ve always liked his voice, but something about Songs For Silverman’s stripped-down, spare style brings the vocals to the forefront. (Speaking of vocals, “Time” features some great backing vocals credited to the aforementioned Mr. Al Yankovic, someone else whose voice tends to be underrated.)

In short, a fantastic album, one of the best things I’ve heard this year. It may not have the “punch line” of Rockin’ The Suburbs, but Songs For Silverman doesn’t need a punch line. There are still plenty of instances of classic Ben Folds humor on his recent series of EPs (and again, I can’t recommend strongly enough that fans pick those CDs up, because Folds as made a whole album’s worth of material in the interval between Suburbs and Silverman, and none of it has been “reject” material). Songs For Silverman is a fine example of some damned good songwriting, something for which Ben Folds is long overdue some credit.

1. Bastard (5:23)
2. You To Thank (3:36)
3. Jesusland (4:30)
4. Landed (4:28)
5. Gracie (2:40)
6. Trusted (4:08)
7. Give Judy My Notice (3:37)
8. Late (3:58)
9. Sentimental Guy (3:03)
10. Time (4:30)
11. Prison Food (4:15)

Released by: Epic / Sony
Release date: 2005
Total running time: 44:12

The final installment of the Star Wars saga not only brings closure to the story of the Skywalker family, it also closes off a legacy of around ten solid hours of some of the most memorable music of the past 50 years – and note that I didn’t narrow that down to “film music” either. John Williams returns to cap off the musical story with his intense, dark score for Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith, and it’s an appropriate musical summation of both the underrated prequel trilogy and of the saga as a whole.

“Revenge Of The Sith” packs a surprising punch, coming out of the familiar main title music not with a gentle, sinister interlude, but with a tradition-shattering, in-your-face battle sequence that simply does not let up; at nearly eight continuous minutes, it’s breathtaking stuff. (Though it’s also savagely edited – if you’ve seen the movie, you know that we still got the traditional sinister interlude at the beginning.) Stylistically, there’s something about this track that screams “prequel trilogy” at me – it’s from the same sonic continuum as Episode I’s rousing podracing music (reused for battle scenes in Episode II and, indeed, in this movie) and the final battle from the same movie.

Track 2, “Anakin’s Dream”, opens up with a surprisingly intimate reading of the Anakin/Padmè love theme from Episode II before treading into darker, murkier waters, twisting that theme subtly until it’s disturbingly dissonant.

“Battle Of The Heroes” is to this score what “Duel Of The Fates” was to Episode I, and in fact I seem to remember reading in 1999 that Lucas had earmarked “Fates” for a reprise during Obi-Wan’s final battle with Anakin. And while “Fates” does make a reappearance in the movie – over Yoda’s epic battle with Darth Sidious – I’m glad that Lucas changed his mind on this front and decided that the Anakin/Obi-Wan battle needed something different. “Heroes” and “Fates” are nice companion pieces, but “Heroes” is brimming with an appropriately tragic inevitability, played out on an operatic scale. “Duel Of The Fates” may have been a little catchier with its low, urgent ostinato – “Heroes”, by contrast, has an undulating, long-lined melody that changes subtly over the course of the piece – but a straight reprise of “Fates” by itself wouldn’t have had the same emotional dynamic that this movie needed. And now we can happily sit and listen to the two of them back-to-back.

“Anakin’s Betrayal” has something of the same operatic sensibility as “Battle Of The Heroes”, and something of its tragedy as well, but it’s a much slower build, almost a stately funeral procession. And we’ll get back to that idea a bit later.

“General Grievous” drags us back into fast-paced action music whether we’re ready for it or not, with busy, dissonant, stabbing brass stings, and low, dark iterations of the Force theme shared by both trilogies; musically, it has a lot in common with the chaotic action scenes toward the beginning of Episode II.

“Palpatine’s Teachings” startled me with how Goldsmithian it was; it’s all low meditations on the established themes for the Emperor and Vader, with solo French horns standing out in stark contrast, and menacing strings that almost make it sound like Jerry Goldsmith returned from the other side just to score a cue for the last Star Wars movie. The cue ends with a triumphant restatement of the Coruscant music from Episode I, one of my favorite pieces of music to have emerged from the prequel trilogy, though it’s used here to represent Senator Organa’s ship: it’s become a theme for the last shards of the Republic’s democracy, not merely a particular place.

“Grievous And The Droids” gets us back to some action music which is probably as close as this score gets to the action cues of the original trilogy. “Padmè’s Ruminations” is another more atmospheric track.

“Anakin Vs. Obi-Wan” starts out in much the same vein as “Battle Of The Heroes”, but it is this cue where we get the first full-blooded statement of Vader’s theme (a.k.a. “The Imperial March”, heard here in a form very much like the scenes from Return Of The Jedi in which Vader watches Luke’s torture at the hands of the Emperor. Eventually the music returns to “Battle Of The Heroes”, but not after a full musical notification that we’re reaching the point of full circle (and, plotwise, the point of no return) with the original trilogy.

“Anakin’s Dark Deeds” is apocalyptic, operatic, and quite chilling. I’m not sure what else I can say here or what else really needs to be said. “Enter Lord Vader” is dark, but far more bombastic. There’s a quiet interlude for a mournful rendition of the Anakin/Padmè love theme again, but after that, for all intents and purposes, the music accomapnies the footsteps of evil, concluding in another full-blast iteration of Vader’s theme. The next track (I’m deliberately not mentioning the title here, though it is in the track list toward the bottom of this review) covers one of the movie’s most disturbing scenes with the right doses of horror and sympathy.

“Grievous Speaks To Lord Sidious” opens up with another blast of operatic fury, but then settles into something quieter but still sinister. “The Birth Of The Twins” and “Padmè’s Destiny” brings back the music from Qui-Gon’s funeral in Episode I, but on a far more grand scale – think along the lines of a gigantic Catholic Mass, and you’ll get the idea.

“A New Hope and End Credits” puts us firmly on the road toward the original three films, with gentle, childlike renditions of Luke and Leia’s theme, followed by a lonely restatement of the “Binary Suns” cue from Star Wars as Obi-Wan begins his exile. From there we segue into the traditional end credits which, for the first few minutes, are virtually the end credits from the original Star Wars – the full recaps of Luke and Leia’s themes act as a bit of musical foreshadowing, eventually leading us to “Battle Of The Heroes”. After that, however, Williams starts reaching much further into the original trilogy, bringing us up to the end of the first movie with several repetitions of the Rebel medal ceremony. This last cue is over 13 minutes long – that’s a lot of credits – and while I find the choice of music fascinating and appropriate, it’s really my one disappointment with the CD as a listening experience. With that kind of running time, it just seems as though Williams squandered his opportunity for one final summation of the entire saga, from Phantom Menace through Return Of The Jedi. There was certainly enough time to something more than eight minutes of the medal march. Something marrying Anakin’s themes from the first two prequels with the themes of his children might have been more appropriate. I wouldn’t be griping, except that I’ve always loved how John Williams synthesizes all of the major themes of a given film in his end credit suites – it’s always been where he shows off some of his most ingenious work. With this kind of running time, this is a grand finale that just doesn’t seem grand enough. To be fair, however, the decision to use – and re-use and re-re-use – that theme may have been made by someone other than the composer himself.

With the movie’s music itself, and not just what’s heard here on this CD, there is the same slight gripe that I had after seeing Attack Of The Clones – there’s a lot of material lifted from earlier movies, though I strongly suspect that some of it was spliced in during editing in order to keep the music coming. The score for Revenge Of The Sith is almost continuous – there are very few scenes that don’t have something in them. I suspect we won’t see an expanded release of this score or the score from Clones, simply because so much of it is edited in from the Phantom Menace score. I was surprised – though I shouldn’t have been – to hear the rousing action music from Anakin’s podrace reprised yet again during the escape from Grievous’ ship. I’m not sure if the decision to do stuff like that was made by the composer or by the director, but that kind of “tracking from library,” from my perspective, denied us the chance to hear Williams strut his stuff one last time. Even though I was underwhelmed with portions of Clones, I still think that giving John Williams a chance to create new soundscapes can only be a good thing. To do otherwise turned portions of each subsequent movie into, effectively, a greatest hits album. I know that podrace music is hard to beat for pure, pulse-pounding action, but does that mean we’re not going to give the man a chance to try?

So there it is, the final Star Wars movie score – at least where Star Wars movies made by their creator are concerned. I realize the word “tragic” probably appears 45 times in the above review, followed immediately by you, the reader, saying “well, duh!”, but that just means that the music hit its marks, doing what John Williams’ music does best and serving as a Greek chorus all its own. There are TV projects waiting the wings, and whether or not Williams is involved with those, or if others add their own music to the legacy or merely re-edit or re-interpret Williams’ themes, there’s no way to deny that he’s made an indelible mark on film music, and on the musical consciousness of at least two generations. It’s hard to really calculate the impact he’s had, but it’s easy to say that it’s been a great ride.

1. Star Wars and The Revenge Of The Sith (7:31)
2. Anakin’s Dream (4:46)
3. Battle Of The Heroes (3:42)
4. Anakin’s Betrayal (4:04)
5. General Grievous (4:07)
6. Palpatine’s Teachings (5:25)
7. Grievous And The Droids (3:28)
8. Padmè’s Ruminations (3:17)
9. Anakin Vs. Obi-Wan (3:57)
10. Anakin’s Dark Deeds (4:05)
11. Enter Lord Vader (4:14)
12. The Immolation Scene (2:42)
13. Grievous Speaks To Lord Sidious (2:49)
14. The Birth Of The Twins and Padmè’s Destiny (3:37)
15. A New Hope and End Credits (13:06)

Released by: Sony Classical
Release date: 2005
Total running time: 70:51

This is an item that took years to track down for my soundtrack collection, and the history of Starfleet Command – and its rarity – is a story unto itself. Bearing the slightly inaccurate legend “Award-winning music from the composer of numerous TV series and Star Trek movies, Ron Jones” (Jones never scored a Trek movie, and over half of the CD’s music was composed by someone else), this CD is the soundtrack from the hit computer game Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. But what’s with the rarity? Surely anything bearing the Star Trek name would be mass-marketed to a fault, wouldn’t it?

In 1998, indie label Sonic Images (started by Christopher Franke of Tangerine Dream and at the time best known for its ongoing series of Babylon 5 “episodic” CDs, each containing the entire score to just one show), won the license to give the Starfleet Academy soundtrack a general release. And around the same time, Sony was prepping its nicely remastered and gorgeously packaged re-release on CD of the Star Trek: The Motion Picture soundtrack, which had been out of print for several years.

But there was one other thing that happened in 1998 that nixed both of those releases: Paramount wanted to give priority to marketing the then-upcoming Star Trek: Insurrection. The studio told Sony and Sonic Images to hold their releases back; Sony later released The Motion Picture 2-CD set in 1999 (which worked better anyway, as that was the film’s 20th anniversary), but Sonic Images’ license was not renewed by Paramount. The label had a warehouse full of pressed CDs, and wanted to renew the license and release that inventory. But Paramount wouldn’t budge – and so Starfleet Academy’s soundtrack, for most, never saw the light of day.

Rumors abounded about the cause of the cancellation, including the possibility that Rick Berman, who had input into Star Trek product licensing, nixed the release to retaliate against former Star Trek: The Next Generation composer Ron Jones’ less-than-flattering comments about his time on the series. Whatever the reason, the only copies of Starfleet Academy that made it into the public’s hands came in the form of premium offers, a limited edition run of the game which included the soundtrack CD, and advance copies of the CD sent out to video game and music journalists ahead of the Sonic Images release. With its cutscenes starring William Shatner and George Takei, and its lush musical score composed and conducted by someone who had actually been connected to the franchise, Starfleet Academy was something of a big deal at the time. Thus ends the tumultuous story of the soundtrack’s premature demise.

Where the music itself is concerned, the first ten tracks will be familiar to those who fondly recall Jones’ music from the first four seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation. His signature sound is sweeping, nautical, and dramatic, paying homage equally to the Star Trek film scores of James Horner and the late, great Jerry Goldsmith and melding those sensibilities nicely. Some of the passages of Starfleet Academy’s musical score are very reminiscent of Jones’ fourth-season Next Generation episode The Nth Degree, and it’s all great stuff – the sort of adventurous bombast that became verboten on the TV series, and yet makes the soundtrack for this computer game sound like a legitimate entry in the movie series.

Jones protegè Brian Luzietti provides the remainder of the music for Starfleet Academy, and while it’s interesting to hear someone attempt to reach toward the same style, some of Luzietti’s tracks don’t quite have the “oomph” of Jones’ music. Then again, that’s probably also a side effect of hearing the music outside of its intended medium – these things would probably go unnoticed buried under the layers of sound effects and pre-recorded dialogue that typically accompany a computer game from the 1990s. Luzietti is at his best when he’s doing his own thing and not trying to meet Jones halfway stylistically, and some of his tracks are quite listenable indeed – and legitimately Trekkish, with throwbacks to the Alexander Courage fanfare for the original series.

1. Starfleet Academy Theme (4:07)
2. Surrounded (2:22)
3. Evasive Maneuvers (2:22)
4. Exploring The Unknown (1:57)
5. On The Edge (2:49)
6. Crew Introduction (1:50)
7. Red Alert (2:49)
8. On To Victory (2:22)
9. Discovery (1:59)
10. No Way Out (2:22)
11. To Stop The Vanguard (3:41)
12. Personal Problems (0:40)
13. Romulan Suicide (1:04)
14. Kirk’s Briefing (1:19)
15. Venturi Suite (3:03)
16. Sneaking Instincts (1:21)
17. The Vanguard’s Plans (1:35)
18. Log – Looking Grim (1:04)
19. Log – Mission Accomplished (1:04)
20. Log – Situation Normal (1:05)
21. Thoughts Before The Briefing (1:38)
22. Forester – Captain Of The Enterprise (4:00)

Released by: Interplay Productions (1998 Sonic Images release cancelled)
Release date: 1997
Total running time: 46:44