Kill Bill, Vol. 2

What movie needs two sets of credits at the end? Sheesh….

Kill Bill is a wild ride and like everyone else, I am looking forward to seeing both volumes edited together. Quentin Tarantino's vision managed to sustain itself to the end, providing a Comic Book epic of the like I have seen since… well ever. The Moulin Rouge of SpaghettiWestern/Samurai/KungFu/70'sRevenge flicks, it is definitely an original. And keeping it all together is Tarantino's peculiar pop-culture blender of music. It takes great skill to bring it all together as a cohesive whole. And he accomplishes it.

The soundtrack for Vol. 1 worked on its own but like Vol. 2 the movie, this album needs a little editing. Or at least some rearranging. This album is too unbalanced into the musical territory of a Mexican western, and plays very similar to Once Upon a Time in Mexico. The joy of the first album was the literal jumping of genres. What other soundtrack could have Isaac Hayes, The Green Hornet and Zamfir and make them flow together?

This time, the effort is not so congruous. Shivaree's "Goodnight Moon" starts the album in a too mellow of the mood that the rest of the album does not build from. Not a single track on the album is bad, but the mellow pace of Johnny Cash, Charlie Feather (with the slow burn "Can't Hardly Stand It") and others drone on. Compounding these problems is that little thought was put into the placement of the tracks. Malcolm McLaren's blue-meets-electronica "About Her" is a great track which samples "She's Not There" but it stands out here (as in the movie). There's not else on the album to compare it to, so it sticks out awkwardly.

For the amount of complaining I am doing, I want to make it very clear, there are plenty of rousing cues on the album. Tarantino again ransacks the best of Italian film scores. Ennio Morricone provides three tracks, with "A Silhouette of Doom" opening the movie with a pulpy aplomb and "L'Arena" providing underscore for the Bride's frightening confrontation with a coffin. The trailer music, "Summertime Killer", is pulled from a 70's Italian cop thriller and continues my love of Luis Bacalov. The literally groovy "The Chase" dwells in some cool Iron Butterfly rhythms and the album ends with the Chingon's lively lust-for-life cover of "Malaguena Salerosa". (As a nice trivia note, Chingon is Robert Rodriguez's band which also performed in Once Upon a Time in Mexico.

Now that we have both albums out, I am left rather unsatisfied (in the soundtrack releases, not the movies). There is a wealth of music ignored on both albums that are among the best music in the movies. What about Ennio Morricone's "Death Rides a Horse"? Lily Chou's hauntingly beautiful "Kaihukusuru Kizu"? Isaac Hayes "Truck Rider"? Human Beinz's "Nobody but You"? Or the other 5.6.7.8 tracks (specifically "I'm Blue")? Usually I can accept the omission of a track or two but there's so many more still not available. What happened to the work that Robert Rodriguez did with the RZA on Vol. 2? This disappointment overwhelms many compliments I have. Hopefully someday a fuller release of the music will be released. Knowing Miramax and their marketing tactics, this is very likely. Shame on them.