Race to Witch Mountain Soundtrack Review

Simplistic Action Score is Serviceable, Bland and Unexciting

Apr 26, 2009 David Abraham Dueck

Trevor Rabin, although a composer who has often proved himself to be talented, has delivered a functional score which severely underachieves and greatly disappoints.

Thanks to projects like Deep Blue Sea, Armageddon, The Great Raid, Flyboys, and National Treasure, Trevor Rabin has gained a level of respect and is becoming a ubiquitous composer in the blockbuster scene.

But while he has shown himself to be talented and quite capable of creating stirring scores, the quality of his more recent scores have been consistently adequate while increasingly anonymous. His latest score for Disney, Race to Witch Mountain, sadly continues the trend.

Lightweight, Synthetic Nature of Rabin’s Scores

Trevor Rabin’s trademark sound is not one that always pleases the ears, especially when heard in large-scale blockbuster scores that he typically writes. Habitually, he writes simple anthems performed by electronics and synthesized orchestras, with the only element of complexity coming from endless sampled percussion loops.

Occasionally he fleshes these basic ingredients out with enough acoustic support and harmonic depth to form more interesting and engaging music (as in Deep Blue Sea and National Treasure: Book of Secrets), and sometimes his base synthetic style is actually suitable to the subject matter (as in his comedy score Hot Rod); but more and more often his simplistic, keyboarded anthems and percussion loops are bland and unexciting, showcasing as they do a lack of innovation (or a lack of desire or need to innovate).

Race to Witch Mountain’s Score

Race to Witch Mountain does nothing to buck this trend. Droning, directionless synthetic strings with stabbing, bouncing electronic rhythms make for energetic chase music, but the lack of any strong melodic lines or substantial orchestration makes the music come across as forced and even annoying.

The music hits all the correct dramatic buttons, but serves no narrative or storytelling purpose in and of itself, as better scores do. Staggered rhythms and the chopping string section are endless and unvarying; tender, more soft-spoken moments are frustratingly few.

Themes, while present, are astoundingly hard to recognize, due to their simplicity and lack of development. Swelling, programmed crescendos with pointless choir fill a purely automatic role. The album is only as interesting as its first few score tracks, and offers absolutely nothing new for film score collectors: the soundtrack is virtually indistinguishable from other recent Rabin scores.

Summary

The only memorable track from the score is the ultimate cue, “Meet the Press,” in which driving rhythms give way to a flute and piano, which carry an attractive melody for a frustratingly brief period before a final, upbeat crescendo, sadly still underlined by tired percussion hits. The piece ends abruptly, without any sort of satisfying resolution. Overall, the discrepancy between the film's musical potential and its resulting score is simply too great.

It is disappointing to see talented but underachieving artists like Trevor Rabin assigned so many new projects a year, when there is little hope he will transcend his established habits. When the most memorable and engaging tracks on a score album are the three intolerable pop songs at the beginning (truly the case with Race to Witch Mountain), the only remedy is to shake one’s head and move on.

The copyright of the article Race to Witch Mountain Soundtrack Review in Pop Music is owned by David Abraham Dueck. Permission to republish Race to Witch Mountain Soundtrack Review in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Race to Witch Mountain Album Cover

Trevor Rabin, Composer

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