Exploring The Life Aquatic Soundtrack Without Mention of Bill Murray

By Joshua Errett

With New Order’s “Ceremony” featured prominently in the The Life Aquatic trailer, one might assume that Wes Anderson had updated his soundtrack cuts from the late 60’s pop gems of Bottle Rocket, Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums to now include like-minded pop gems from the late 70’s. With this week’s release of The Life Aquatic Origninal Soundtrack, that assumption proves only half right.
The soundtrack does hover around the latter half of the disco decade, but manages to stay away from any New Order songs and other well-liked selections – or at least well-liked versions. Anderson has chosen to include a variety of Ziggy Stardust-era Bowie covered by Brazillian artist Seu Jorge. Jorge’s sublime renditions of “Starman” and “Rock’n’Roll Suicide” up the mood of the originals and remain peculiar enough to gel with Bowie’s outer space persona. The Brasilia samba-flavour in “Rebel Rebel” and “Life on Mars” bring out Bowie’s best pop hooks, while mostly retaining his original ideas. It seems less than coincidental that Jorge (also stars as Pele dos Santos in the film) plays on themes of discovery and exploration in the soundtrack to a film that covers similar ground (albeit aquatic instead of orbital; familial instead of homosexual).
With some truly bizarro soundtracks out in the past few months (Bridget Jones 2 includes Primal Scream, Sponge Bob Square Pants recruits the Shins), Life Aquatic‘s Brasilia flare almost makes perfect sense. Considering the not-quite-over year, Life Aquatic is perhaps strongest soundtrack yet. (Although that might be the aftereffects of digesting so many year-end lists).