UNKLE

End Titles… Stories For Film (Surrender All)

By Lindsay Trapnell
Published: October 21st, 2008 | 9:00am

James Lavelle, the mastermind behind the ever-changing musical outfit UNKLE, deems End Titles…Stories For Film, “not a new album in the usual sense, but new music that has been inspired by the moving image.” Much of UNKLE’s previous output had a cinematic feel — so this concept album isn’t out of their musical comfort zone. For a prime example of UNKLE’s music used as a canvas for beautiful imagery, see the 1998 video for “Rabbit In Your Headlights,” directed by Jonathan Glazer.

Little is as stirring as when music and film perfectly integrate, adding depth and emotion to both sound and image. End Titles isn’t a score to a specific film, yet the music feels thin on its own, and I couldn’t help but think about its greater potential with accompanying visuals. A few of the songs on End Titles were culled from visual sources. Two of the strongest tracks on the album — the menacing “Blade In the Back” and the meditative, seven-minute “Heaven” — are featured in Odyssey In Rome, a documentary about director Abel Ferrara (whose vocals are featured on the album), and "Heaven" also appears in the Spike Jonze–directed skate video, Fully Flared.

As a whole, the album is moody, dark, and foreboding: A fitting soundtrack for flying over a city at night, staring bleary-eyed at the city lights below — my experience when I first listened to it. “Cut Me Loose” is the kind of atmospheric number that UNKLE excels at, featuring a driving bass drum beat and dramatic crescendos. As is custom with UNKLE, a slew of musical collaborators appear on the album. The Black Mountain–featuring “Clouds” works spooky magic with pulsating guitar, reverb, and haunting, repetitive vocals; but “Chemical,” featuring Josh Homme of Queens Of the Stone Age, collapses under its own overwrought weight.

It’s been tough for UNKLE to reach the heights of their debut, Psyence Fiction (Lavelle’s collaboration with DJ Shadow and numerous guest stars), and again, this effort falls short. While the album certainly shows off Lavelle and company’s talent for film composition, the music doesn’t prove itself on its own merits as a cohesive, complete album. Like a meandering movie that could’ve used a tougher editor, End Stories doesn’t sustain interest for the duration.

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