Twister Soundtrack

I used to own this movie soundtrack back in the day (1996), then ditched it when I got tired of it. Recently, I found it for $1, so I decided to give it another whirl.

Van Halen’s Humans Being is a great Van Halen tune, musically. It’s a wall of sound, and a cool riff (is that redundant when talking about VH? I think so!)! But the chanted verse lyrics do nothing for me. It all gets better at the chorus though, which is actually melodic. Imagine needing to wait for that. Sigh.

Rusted Root’s Virtual Reality shifts the album’s gears completely to a sweet, swingin’ country stomper. Tori Amos’ Talula shift us again to a pretty almost-Alanis electro-chanteuse thing like only Amos can do it.

Whew! These first three tracks make this record all over the map – whomever put this together was out to disjoint us! Let’s see where they go from here…

Alison Krauss & Union Station’s Moments Like This is a beautiful, hypnotic slow track that makes everything feel alright again. Mark Knopfler channels the Pogues with Darling Pretty’s intro, then turns in a middle of the road Knopfler rock track. Soul Asylum brings us back up with a decent rocker. Oh man that mades me nostalgic for the 90s.

Belly’s classic Broken is a keeper, I always liked this track, probably because the whole thing reminds me of Holly McNarland. k.d. lang brings us back down to a late-night atmospheric slow dancer called Love Affair. Next is Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories (another 90s nostlgia moment!) with the excellent acoustic guitar-driven How. Next we switch to the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Melancholy Mechanics, which is a simple little ditty until a few moments, here and there, when the band crashes in… briefly. This one feels like a neat yet unfinished idea.

Goo Goo Dolls’ brilliant Long Way Down is a solid rocker with great guitars. I have the album from which this track was pulled and this was a highlight track over there, too. Then we get No One Needs To Know by Shania Twain which, back when I used to own this CD, was the only song of hers I could even stand. This time it’s the same thing – the smart songwriting and old country feel of this one makes it a strong song no matter who played it. Stevie Nicks & Lindsey Buckingham’s Twisted is a fairly basic rock track but the real draw here is the vocals, of course. And then Eddie and Alex Van Halen are back to close things out with Respect The Wind, a cool guitar and keys instrumental. Damn, I could listen to that guy play guitar all day. And I have!

In Sum:

You know something? It’s all over the place, but this is still a pretty damn good CD. Glad I picked it back up.