Thomas Newman's patient score for the revenge drama The Salton Sea is filled with such an honest sense of noir that one can't help wondering if the man moonlights as a P.I. As a whole, the soft pianos and long string cues resonate like a chillier version of his excellent work on 1994's The Shawshank Redemption. His deep understanding of the human condition is evident during the dreamy "Gun Cemetery." With it's atonal piano notes falling like misled raindrops, it resembles an instrumental rendering of the image-laden "9th and Hennepin" off of
Tom Waits'
Rain Dogs album. The spooky solo trumpet on the atmospheric "First Wife" and "Saeta" closely mirrors the protagonist's lonely vigilantism, causing the sultry Rhodes-led groove on "Glock Semi-Automatic" to sound like an out of control freight train.
Newman's mastery of the organic and the processed world of sounds has a great deal to do with his talent for seamlessness -- the gritty backwards guitar loop that opens "Palmdale Monty" simply sounds like an instrument in the composers repertoire -- and his otherworldly restraint. By refusing to fill the space between each breath, car chase, and gunfight, he unleashes a much more effective beast, a quiet and elegant bombast. ~ James Christopher Monger