Disteria: A New Moon's Muse

(from a guest editorial piece i wrote over at 17tracks.blogspot.com)

This past weekend the newest addition to the Twilight franchise, New Moon, opened in pretty much every theater in the country, and filled their seats with gleeful tweenie girls (and the few unfortunate boyfriends). These hordes of fans gave the sequel to last year's hit Twilight the 3rd highest opening weekend in history, clocking in at $140 million for the three day period. Only The Dark Knight and Spiderman 3 have been able to do better business in a single weekend. The marketing presence of this behemoth studio picture was felt everywhere in the week leading up to the premiere, and one of the best techniques put into good practice was that of the movie's soundtrack.

With it's leading single by Death Cab for Cutie, "Meet Me at the Equinox," becoming a hit heard often on the airwaves, and prominent well-respected artists such as Thom Yorke (of Radiohead) and The Killers lending their talents to the soundtrack it has become a very successful media entity in its own right, and has followed in the footsteps of soundtracks like Juno and Little Miss Sunshine as a launching pad for relatively unknown independent artists. But it went a step further and spent a good extra penny on producing exclusive and original new songs, creating almost as much hype for the soundtrack as the film itself.

It peaked on Billboard's Top 200 list of albums at #1 and has stayed in the Top Ten since it's release on October 16th, with it's early release 3-day sales of 115,000 and first full week's 153,000. The original Twilight soundtrack eventually sold over 2 million copies last year, and its sequel looks to do even better.

Some of the highlights on this mellow and warm album include Grizzly Bear's "Slow Life" featuring the lovely sounds of Victoria Legrand of Beach House, Bon Iver and St. Vincent's "Rosyln" duet, and Lykke Li's frail "Possibility" ballad. These impressive tracks are streamed below.

In the end, this soundtrack has made even the most passionately anti-studio hipster appreciate the artful purpose of such a collaborative piece. While at first glance I felt as though many of my favorite indie artists were essentially selling out to the by-product of a "Team Edward v. Team Jacob" media campaign, upon a thorough listen of this production I have been led to believe that they simply found inspiration in the love-torn story that is presented in New Moon, and created their own unique visions to help tell its encompassing tale.