EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY & DAVID WINGO: PRINCE AVALANCHE (OST)

I'm not surprised at the lack of recognition here for the latest (to date) album from Explosions in the Sky. The film itself was an unassuming indie sleeper, and the soundtrack is likewise a below-the-radar gemstone, hidden in plain sight.

The music, co-written by EitS and veteran movie composer David Wingo, does an excellent job of capturing the quirky, character-driven narrative: an offbeat, possibly allegorical buddy film about two mismatched highway workers (Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch) painting road stripes across an almost empty stretch of fire-scarred West Texas woodland. The tone of the film, combining deadpan humor, understated pathos, and a touch or magic realism, is a long way from the Hollywood assembly line. And the score is far removed from the Post Rock rut of other Explosions albums, enough to sound like an entirely different set of musicians.

The music is more ambient than expected, and more playful, evincing a fragile delicacy at right angles to the band's usual Panavision guitar epics. Note the dominance of acoustic instruments - gently plucked guitar and minimalist piano. You'll notice too (or maybe not, if you're as entranced as I was) the lack of percussion in all but two of the fifteen short tracks. And is that a sequencer I hear, driving the melody "Join Me in My Avalanche"?

Like any movie soundtrack the album is arranged in brief thematic fragments, only three of which pass the four-minute threshold: again, atypical for this group. It's unclear how much of it is David Wingo and how much belongs to the Explosions quartet. But the distribution of credit isn't important. This was definitely a band stepping outside its comfort zone, and reaping the benefits of the unfamiliar footing.