The Divine Chord

The Avalanches (feat. MGMT & Johnny Marr)

One of the reasons I love this band so much is because it’s difficult to recognize where one sample ends and another begins. It just feels like great music in the end, and it took some alchemy to get there.

It’s what we try to do as filmmakers. Watching your film should feel like one meaningful and emotional experience. We direct the storytelling and try to pull all the elements together — i.e. the narrative, character arcs, camera set ups, vfx, edits, performances, reaction shots, music, sound design, etc. etc. The juxtaposition and layers of all these elements should feel like one experience in the end. If any one element is awry, the whole expereince could collapse.

The Avalanches are making a stew with each track — finding the right ingredients. They merge found samples together that feel destined for each other, so the whole feels greater than the sum of the parts.

Fusing Karen Carpenter with Cola Boyy and making it feel wonderful isn’t easy to do. Or in this case, speeding up The Shirelles and bringing in Johnny Marr and MGMT. Those VanWyngarden lyrics and vocals are so beautiful with this music. It feels like a perfect fit. Apparently he was going through a break up and his melancholy shone through. And those little background vocal interludes between each I still remember you are magic.

And they aren’t just borrowing things they like. That’s part of it, but it’s actually what they add to each track that elevates and defines. How they expand the songs. It’s the new stuff that seems to pull the tracks together and give them each depth and singularity.

WE WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU is an album that just keeps on giving — because my favorite track keeps changing. Way back in January, I pulled GOLD SKY as my second song of the day choice. A song that still blows my mind on a record that I keep going back to because it makes me feel good when I play it.