After collecting a reverent and respectful collection of song's for his 2008 film Australia, The Great Gatsby is an opportunity for director
Baz Luhrmann to get back to the glitz, garish, and campy ways that made his earlier soundtracks Romeo + Juliet and
Moulin Rouge such delights. What made them delicious was how smart and savvy they were under all that glittery make-up. With
Jay-Z and
the Bullitts as executive producers,
Luhrmann's soundtrack to his lavish adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's famous 1925 novel is smart, savvy, and more than just a Jazz Age-meets-iPod Age mash-up, although sometimes, it is just the latter, like when
will.i.am makes the Charleston flappers go electro with his entirely obvious and irresistibly fun "Bang Bang." Cute to hear
Bryan Ferry doing the
Roxy Music rag with his "and the Orchestra"'s take on "Love Is the Drug", and while the
Fergie,
Q-Tip, and
GoonRock cut called "A Little Party Never Killed Nobody (All We Got)" is the film's fireworks exploding with posterity, decadence, and disco, many of the soundtrack's meatier cuts are post-explosion and post-paradise. Meatiest and most surprising has to be the
Lana Del Rey and
Luhrmann composition "Young and Beautiful" ("Will you still love me when I have nothing but my aching soul?"), but Fitzgerald fans could make a case for the tortured and "green light"-referencing "Over the Love" from
Florence + the Machine. Elsewhere, there's
Beyoncé and
André 3000's icy cold reading of
Amy Winehouse's "Back to Black,"
the xx offering intimate and indie chamber music with "Together," and
Sia's wonderful closer "Kill and Run," an elegant ballad which is tossed about the sea before it crashes on the rocks. Buying into
Luhrmann's vision is always the issue, but here, the music is crafted enough, inspired enough, and deep enough that it's worth diving into without reservations. Luckily, you can wring all that disappointment and despair out of your fine, stylish suit after surfacing. ~ David Jeffries