“Inside all of us is a wild thing,” and the rumpus starts with Karen O and the Kids in the soundtrack to Spike Jonze’s film Where the Wild Things Are, based on the picture children’s book by Maurice Sendak. Build an igloo, be a wolf, rule as king, swing off trees, wave goodbye, and sail home. Karen O from Yeah Yeah Yeahs brings us back to that place; the place where imagination and credulous innocence unfurls to very own faraway kingdoms. Sitting around the circle are contributors Deerhunter, The Raconteurs, LIARS, GRIS GRIS, and the list simply goes on. Just as The NeverEnding Story was a fixture in my childhood, which by the way probably dates me, so this soundtrack has the vigor to ‘play on’ through sandbox playgrounds, tree house fantasies, “mischief of one kind and another,” and tickle trunk games. I would like to be runaway Max. I would absolutely be keen on transforming into a dragon looking wild thing after embarking on the waters of this soundtrack. Indomitable Karen O and the untrained choir of kids recite a spelling-bee tune to Capsize, throw howling coos in Heads Up, Hideaway silent and still, and countdown to finding L-O-V-E in All is Love. In the end though, the moral of the story, and there is one in every good tale, is that home, where the “food is still hot,” is where the heart is. (Or maybe it’s saying that every kid can get angry and frustrated at times.) Now, if I could only build a time machine and just be that kid again…
Key Tracks: All is Love, Rumpus Reprise, Building All is Love, Capsize
Moods: Imaginative, Evocative, Child-like, Upbeat, Adventurous, Empowering
Buy: Where the Wild Things Are
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- Amy Millan – Masters of the Burial
