The words “from and inspired by the movie” seem perfectly calculated to strike fear into even the most casual of music fans. And with good cause, because that phrase is usually code for “one track from a band you kinda-like plus 10 you’ll never listen to plus one Guns ‘n’ Roses B-side from 1986 that the director really liked”. It’s always a tough decision to take the leap and shell out for a soundtrack – and an even tougher one when you know all the songs are penned by Ben Lee and performed by an ex-Home & Away starlet.

 

Surprisingly, The Square soundtrack (as heard in the upcoming Aussie thriller) manages to survive the soundtrack label, Ben Lee, and even the fiery curse of Home & Away. Friends with the film’s director Nash Edgerton, Ben was approached with a script to score and accepted the challenge, picking up vocalist (and Summer Bay refugee) Jessica Chapnik along the way. Like all good little soundtracks, the mood of The Square aims to bottle the atmosphere of the movie; in this case, one of yearning and bleakness.

 

 

Although it’s Jessica pushing the words through her vocal cords, the lyrics, the arrangements, and the feel of the album is inextricably Ben Lee. But while Ben often struggles in packaging his own songs without coming across as trite and overly sentimental, there’s something about the breathy honesty in Jessica’s voice that makes sense for these tracks, stripping back the layers of affectation that slather Ben’s solo work. The main reason that The Square soundtrack works so well is because Ben Lee handed the mike to someone else.

 

Jessica knows how to sell the emotion of Ben’s lyrics, sometimes injecting a playful and girly quality to her voice (‘Unloved Letters’, the standout track), and most of the time playing it quiet, sombre, and just above the ‘preciously vulnerable’ line that’s so easy to dip underneath when singing about emotional angst and existential soul-searching. ‘Let Go of Everything’ is a prime example – the twee title serving as the main lyric, but delivered with just enough aloofness to save it from the slushy abyss where it could have otherwise headed.

 

The album does misstep occasionally – the self-consciously clever wordplay in ‘Sand’ hits the ground with a thud, and ‘No Such Thing’ is too gooey for its own good (though does contain the interesting lyric “when I’m with you, I feel like a man” – presumably unchanged since Ben wrote it). But overall it’s a nice album and, most importantly, a surprise that something involving so many dubious elements could come together and succeed.