With sly humour and an intensity of feeling, The Spectacular Now creates a vivid, three- dimensional portrait of youth confronting the thrilling and perilous business of modern love and adulthood. This is the tale of Sutter Keely, a high school senior and effortless charmer, and of how he unexpectedly falls in love with "the good girl" Aimee Finecky. What starts as an unlikely romance, becomes a sharp-eyed, straight-up snapshot of the heady confusion and haunting passion of youth – one that doesn’t look for tidy truths...

Who better to create the soundtrack to a quirky, romantic comedy than Rob Sumonsen who co-composed the equally bizarre score to Seeking a Friend for the End of the World. Once again, though, as enjoyable as it is, it's a bit of a fluffy, lightweight affair - bordering on twee.

For the movie, this no doubt sets the right tone, but it's hard to listen to on its own merits without the accompanying pictures. However, if you're looking for a mellow, contemporary score to relax too then you could do a lot worse than this. Personally though, it did little for me and it's not an album I'll be listening to again.

The soundtrack contains 23 tracks, representing 1 hr, 04 min, 43 sec of music. There are also three artist tracks: 'Song for Zula' - Phosphorescent; 'Baby (feat. Dâm-Funk)' - Ariel Pink and 'Wakin’ On a Pretty Day' - Kurt Vile.

5

Darren Rea