Lakeshore Records release Benjamin Gibbard's score for Laggies. Overeducated and underemployed, 28 year old Megan is in the throes of a quarterlife crisis. Squarely into adulthood with no career prospects, no particular motivation to think about her future and no one to relate to, Megan is comfortable lagging a few steps behind - while her friends check off milestones and celebrate their new grown-up status. When her high-school sweetheart proposes, Megan panics and - given an unexpected opportunity to escape for a week – hides out in the home of her new friend, 16-year old Annika and Annika’s world-weary single dad Craig...

Laggies is Benjamin Gibbard first score for a full-length narrative film. He's the lead singer and songwriter for Death Club for Cutie. Sadly, this isn't the greatest of starts to Gibbard's movie career.

It's not that the music is bland, it isn't. The problem here is that the score is delivered as music cues - the sort of snippets of music that are short and can be inserted anywhere. It's almost as though the director and composer didn't really see eye-to-eye on the project and the result was the director just asked Gibbard to give him a collection of short music cues to represent various scenarios and emotions, which could then be slotted into the movie wherever necessary.

It's a shame, really, because there are themes that start to go somewhere... and then abruptly stop. Tracks like 'Drive Precall', just start to get interesting... before it's over and we're onto the next one.

The album contains 22 tracks (21 min, 17 min), so is really more an EP than an album. It's not a score that you can comfortably listen to as a standalone project. It feels half-complete, disjointed and frankly isn't worthy of your time. This is one score that is best enjoyed where it was originally intended to be heard: in the movie.

2

Darren Rea