'Dead Man’s Shoes' - soundtrack for people who favour dark nights

Soundtrack albums have become just another marketing tool of late, hyping movies upon music fans or introducing an act to film-goers that, not surprisingly, often doesn’t work. But, this time, the ‘Dead Man’s Shoes’ songs are essential and central to the film and each cut is hand-picked by director Shane Meadows.

This collection, over 18 songs, compliments the duality of natural and urban decaying, contrasting great vistas of the Peak District with the brutal scenes of the plot’s bloody retribution. The warped folk of (Smog) and The Earlies are interwoven with the eerie Spaghetti Western drama of Calexico’s instrumental tracks [three here, director’s fave outfit?], the cracked Orientalism of Lucky Dragons on ‘Heartbreaker’ and the hauntingly beautiful freak-ola that is Cul De Sac’s ‘I Remember Nothing More’, while heartfelt singer/songwriter narrative songs from Adem, Gravenhurst and Clayhill tip the emotional scales.

P.G. Six’s ‘Fallen Leaves’ is as fragile as morning frost in direct opposition to Laurent Garnier’s brilliantly screwed-up, “rhythmic-drone centrepiece ‘Forgotten Thoughts’ [that] accompanies the film’s ‘acid scene’ as the vigilante lead character, Richard, spikes his nemeses’ tea kettle with a lethal psychotropic cocktail... carnage ensues,” is how the film‘s PR has it. M.Ward’s starkly poignant ‘Dead Man’ could not be more fitting to bring this aural journey to a port. But there is, after an extended silent period, yet DM & Gemini’s ‘The Only One’ to end it all, sounding like a bootylicious cry in a polar night.

‘Dead Man's Shoes’ movie is a dark story, a brooding piece about Brit-reality of the 21st-century kind in Anytown, Midlands, where the main character hunts down the drug dealers who wronged his younger brother by picking them off like a sadistic female-hating womaniser toying with ladies’ hearts… With a combined efficiency of Rambo-cum-Charles Bronson‘s ‘Death Wish’ characters.

The soundtrack’s working within the film is not diminished sans visuals and the CD stands alone proudly as a thought-provoking analysis of innermost perspectives of rage, violence, vengeance… Quietly disturbing, its hue is melancholically bluish but from the bottom you observe the stellar vastness… without any light pollution.

8.5/10