Recommended: Film In Music – “Tell Tale”

Tell Tale is a response to the soundtrack of HBO show Deadwood.  And the word ‘response’ is key, because the Peggy Lee ensemble Film In Music doesn’t structure their album in a way that represents a parade of scenes, nor does the music have a cinematic ambiance or the cohesion of a soundtrack’s united imagery.  Instead, each piece of Tell Tale stands on its own, a direct interaction with the Deadwood source material that inspired it.  Those interactions don’t carry over from piece to piece, and it’s why the transitions between songs are often jarring and detached, as if walking through a museum where each room contained only one work of art, and none that could be associated with the others.

The result is a different kind of listening experience, where pauses of silence between each track are recommended, and the need to listen to the album in the order presented is not necessarily required.  It would be intriguing to see the effect of listening to each piece immediately after watching its associated Deadwood scene.  Some of the track names are clear lines of communication between album and tv show.  There isn’t much separating the furious build of activity on “An Eyeball for Dan” and the brutality of the scene that informs it.  The underlying intensity of the scene from “A Walk Through Town” is present on the song, as is the blur of activity and sights attributable to any other afternoon in Deadwood, the clash of great danger and the mundane.  And then there’s the bittersweet tone of “Wild Bill” and how it speaks to the heart of what might have been and what was lost.

There is something particularly refreshing about a soundtrack project coming off nothing like an actual soundtrack, and instead honoring the personal interactions that we all have with art… where qualities unique only to ourselves and those shared subconsciously with masses of people we’ve never known all come crashing down together in a series of vaguely identifiable connections, yet deeply seated reactions.

Your album personnel:  Peggy Lee (cello), Kevin Elaschuk (trumpet), Jesse Zubot (violin), Dylan van der Schyff (drums), Torsten Muller (acoustic bass), André Lachance (electric bass), Chris Gestrin (Fender Rhodes) and Ron Samworth (guitar).

Released on Drip Audio.

Listen to another album track on the label’s Soundcloud page.

Music from the Vancouver, BC scene.

Available at:  Amazon | eMusic