Silva Screen Records digitally release Lindsay Wright’s score for Archie, ITV’s serialised biopic of Cary Grant, based on Dyan Cannon’s biography Dear Cary and Jennifer Grant’s memoir Good Stuff. Archie is a uniquely sad profile of the Hollywood star, taking the viewer through his tumultuous life and focusing on later years...

If richly layered scores with a melancholic core are your thing, then you're in for a treat with Lindsay Wright’s soundtrack for Archie. The album consists of 20 tracks (32 min, 47 sec) and just about covers all bases, perfectly portraying Cary Grant’s emotional turmoil. It opens with a strained piano theme over pulsating strings, the two-chord harmonic movement remaining unresolved. Much of the score underlines the emotional anguish, apart from a jazzy number ‘Here We Go’, placing Cary’s childhood in '20s Bristol and the upbeat, fast moving track ‘Rehearsing’. ‘Child Birth’, followed by ‘Jennifer’ sweetly depicts the brief time of happy domesticity in Grant’s life.

It has more heart and soul poured into it than I was expecting and this is one of those scores that works incredibly well as a collection of beautiful themes in its own right. You don't have to have seen the serialised biopic to get the most out of this - although it helps.

This is an album that I loved the first time I heard it, and one that I've replayed countless times. I know that I'll be revisiting it periodically for years to come. A rich, rewarding collection of beautiful themes. Wright perfectly captures the heart and soul of the great man in intimate detail.

9

Darren Rea