Firefly

Here\'s how it is: Firefly got shafted. Got kicked and shuffled. A couple of Browncoats livin\' on the edge of the Black, tryin\' to survive in a cruddy transport ship called Serenity, takin\' on odd jobs and train robberies to put grub on the ruttin\' table; wasn\'t enough. But it got a new shiny life on the big screen, and the purple bellies at Fox Music got to burn forty minutes of Firefly music onto the Net, Greg Edmonson\'s music, with banjos and fiddles, guitars and rumbles, a bit of country, some folksy tunes to keep ya warm in the \'verse.

It starts with a shiny ole country song by Sonny Rhodes, written and composed by that multi-talented son of a gun, Joss Whedon, also created the ruttin\' show. There\'s percussion there that feels like a breeze of cool air, and a whiny fiddle you\'d hear countryside. "Big Bar Fight" is what happens come Unification Day, when a couple of Brown Coats find themselves in an Alliance-friendly bar that\'s ready to toast for victory on the Independents. It gets pretty messy, but it\'s all in good ruttin\' fun with strummy guitars, dissonant fiddlin\', and shiny banjo slides. The action music, the rest of it, comes off pretty weak, all sharp chords and bouncin\' perc. Nothin\' to write home about, wherever home might be. Beautiful is what I\'d call all that fiddle stuff, them quiet moments where that lonely violin comes through, not sly or weepy, but real beautiful, like "Inara\'s Suite" and "River Understands Simon".

Don\'t go lookin\' for no themes in this here \'verse. There\'s colors, instead, and textures, subtle stuff. A clarinet motif for the bounty hunter aside ("Early Takes Serenity", "River Tricks Early", "Goodbye Early"), no melody\'s ever gonna come back. There\'s that timpani at the end of measures, like in the openin\' narration, givin\' weight, and all those airy synths and dreamy stuff for River, and some ruttin\' duduk whistlin\' for Niska, and them good ole banjos and fiddles for the crew of Serenity. There\'s light piano you barely hear, and I\'ll be darned no tear rolls down your cheek with all them drama strings in "Deserted Ship", with Mal barely alive and the ship close to kickin\'. Them notes can get to you if you\'re not careful, but ain\'t nobody gonna be pullin\' out shiny artillery to the sound of those action pieces.

Edmonson knows about folk and what makes \'em folk, the human stuff, scratchin\' dusty fiddles with homey melodies, slidin\' down a banjo\'s neck, tongue in cheek. There\'s this other boy, over yonder, calls himself Newman, can whistle himself a tune with bangin\' pipes, and racin\' drums, and all sorts of no acoustic strummies, can really get your heart pumpin\'. Mebbe Firefly could\'ve used some of that heart-pumpin\', no tone noise, but the Newman fella got nothin\' on Edmonson\'s western tunes. Ole Greg never thought some Irish jig was any gorram song for some honest folk down South....