Five overlooked albums by ‘Best Original Score’ nominees
With the Oscars arriving later in the week, many cinephiles will be wondering who will be scooping the big awards at the film industry’s biggest night. However, while there’s always a close eye on the talent behind the visual aspects, with the ‘Best Picture’, ‘Best Director’, and the ‘Best Actor’ and ‘Actress in a Leading Role’ categories tending to grab the most headlines between them, rarely would the big winners in cinema be the same without an incredible soundtrack to accompany them.
All the best soundtracks are able to bring a scene to life and add additional emotional depth to what we see on screen, and while you can have a successful picture that relies on cinematography, acting and writing to propel it forward, the score is the final piece of the puzzle that has the capacity to elevate a scene or an entire film. Whether it’s swelling strings, intense whirling synthesisers or orchestral bombast, soundtracks offer so much.
However, writing to accompany a film is a difficult prospect and far removed from the process of writing a pop album. Constantly thinking of how to get a song to fit a scene’s visuals, matching the mood of what’s happening in the dialogue or plot, or simply getting every element to flow together for over an hour is a much more complex process, and there’s a good reason why only the bravest and most talented songwriters are able to successfully transition from writing contemporary music to writing for the screen and back again.
Given that there will be an award for ‘Best Original Score’ dished out imminently, we’re taking a look at five overlooked albums by people who have previously been nominated (or are nominated this year) in this category. While some of them bear a slight resemblance to their film soundtrack works, others will be considerably more of a surprise to those who are only familiar with their cinematic efforts.
Five overlooked ‘Best Original Score’ nominees:
Yuck – Yuck
Having already snatched a Bafta for his epic score for Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist, many are putting British composer Daniel Blumberg down as one of the frontrunners to scoop the Academy Award for ‘Best Original Score’ as well. Surprisingly, this is only the second feature-length film he has composed the soundtrack for, but considering the strength of this effort and how dramatic some of his solo work is, it wouldn’t be surprising to see him land a few more jobs working in film.
However, Blumberg wasn’t always creating moody soundscapes. Prior to forging a career as a solo artist, he enjoyed spells in two London indie rock groups. Initially, he fronted the shortlived Cajun Dance Party before departing alongside bandmate Max Bloom to form Yuck. Their self-titled debut album is the only one of their records that Blumberg appears on, but its incredible mix of Dinosaur Jr-esque guitars and occasional bursts of shoegaze influences make it a hidden gem from a tepid era for indie rock in the UK.
Hauschka – Salon des Amateurs
Another one of the favourites to win this year’s prestigious award, German composer Volker Bertelmann is the only entrant on this list to have been nominated more than once, having already won at the Oscars in 2022 for his soundtrack to All Quiet on the Western Front and been nominated in 2016 for his collaborative work with Dustin O’Halloran for Lion. While he faces stiff competition from this year’s nominees, Conclave has been having an outstanding awards season so far, and it wouldn’t turn many heads if he contributed another prize to the haul for his work on the papal drama.
When not making minimalist classical music, Bertelmann composes music under the moniker Hauschka, which has seen him explore many other genres. It would have been possible to give a nod to his 2011 album Pan Tone, which he made in collaboration with fellow Oscar winner Hildur Guðnadóttir, but that release isn’t too dissimilar from his film work. 2009’s Salon des Amateurs, on the other hand, is a brilliant album of piano-led jazz that is punctuated by occasional glitchiness and delicate percussion. It’s a wonderful display of Bertelmann’s versatility and a side that we would be glad to see him explore again.
Jerskin Fendrix – Winterreise
Many would have seen the decision by Yorgos Lanthimos to hire the oddball art-pop producer Jerskin Fendrix as the composer for the soundtrack to Poor Things as an unusual choice, especially considering his inexperience when it comes to having worked in such a capacity. Given that the composer, whose real name is Joscelin Dent-Pooley, was a relatively unknown entity compared to the Greek director, whose stock had been rapidly rising due to the success of films such as The Favourite and The Lobster, it came as a surprise to see that Fendrix’s warped approach to pop was, in fact, the perfect fit considering how strange and surreal the film is.
If you can believe it, Fendrix’s debut album, Winterreise, is even more bizarre than his score for the film. Jumping from videogame-inspired hyperpop to ‘90s R&B sounds within the course of a song, his only solo album to date is a flurry of ideas that shouldn’t sit well together, and to some ears, they probably don’t. However, his madcap inventiveness and resistance to being placed in one area are impossible to digest fully on one cursory listen, and when you dive in for deeper repeated listens, this is where the true genius of Winterreise begins to hit you. There’s nothing exactly filmic about it, but the playfulness certainly seeped through into his debut soundtrack effort for Poor Things.
Micachu & the Shapes – Jewellery
Thanks to their work alongside Jonathan Glazer on the haunting scores for Under The Skin and The Zone of Interest, there’s hardly any surprise that British multi-instrumentalist Mica Levi has become one of the most in-demand avant-garde film composers. Their minimalistic and downright creepy soundtracks that utilise silence and empty space as tools to create tension are masterful, and even their more conventional work for the Natalie Portman-starring biopic Jackie is a sublime piece of work that was fully deserving of its Oscar nomination.
Considering the sparse and often spooky nature of their film scores, it’s somewhat unusual to think that Levi and their previous band, Micachu and the Shapes, created music that sounds like a toybox being emptied and every single item being used. Their debut album, Jewellery, is similar to Jerskin Fendrix’s Winterreise in that it doesn’t like to remain in one lane throughout but is entirely different in as much as few other records sound like it. Homemade instruments, glitchy and atonal electronics and vacuum cleaners are all sounds you can look forward to hearing, but don’t let those take away from the incredible pop credentials of the album.
Owen Pallett – Heartland
It’s nothing short of a travesty that Canadian songwriter Owen Pallett hasn’t contributed to more film soundtracks throughout their career, as their songwriting has a certain epic quality to it that would fit perfectly with plenty of Hollywood dramas during their most climactic moments. Working alongside Arcade Fire’s Will Butler, Pallett produced the score for Spike Jonze’s dystopian romcom Her in 2013, which received a nod for the Academy Award, but in addition to this, they’ve remarkably only contributed to two other films in their career.
Given Pallett’s ability to weave narratives through their music on conceptual records like Heartland, you’d think that they’d be in high demand. This 2010 album – the first under their birth name following a string of releases under the Final Fantasy moniker – is a glorious display of baroque art-pop that tells the story of its protagonist, Lewis, who is thrust into an imaginary realm called Spectrum. They would continue telling the story over the course of their next two albums, In Conflict and Island, but the grandness of Heartland is what ultimately showcases Pallett at their best and ought to be slid under the noses of more film producers.
