Vampires, Sasquatch, And The Gregory Gorillas

A Review of the “New Moon” Soundtrack, or When Bigfoot Comes Knocking, Don’t Tell Me A South Dakota Native Didn’t Warn You

All of this talk lately of Robert Pattinson and the upcoming release of “New Moon,” the second step in the “Twilight” quatrain, has got me thinking a lot about that famous South Dakotan with a similar name: Roger Patterson.
Okay, famous is not the optimum word. But, if the South Dakota Hall of Fame knew their Gomer from their Gladys Pyle they’d have inducted Patterson the moment he produced that grainy-colored videotape of Sasquatch back in the late 1960s.

What, you didn’t know? The tape—considered to be the Scopes Monkey Trial of Bigfoot polemics—was shot by none other than Patterson, a native of Wall, South Dakota. How’s that for Great Faces, Great Places?

So, I normally wouldn’t put Pattinson in the same illustrious category as Patterson. Except for this week; because right now, Pattinson’s laser-etched face appears on the cover of a movie soundtrack you may seriously consider purchasing. Which is like, what, the first time since T Bone Burnett’s “O, Brother Where Art Thou?”

The “New Moon” soundtrack isn’t just good in a “oh it’s not as nauseatingly emo as I thought it probably should be” kind of way. Certainly, you have mawkish angst to go along with the heart-twisting plotline of a film about teenage vampires (spoiler: I hear Edward leaves Bella!). And the Pitchfork Mafia has already decried the album’s “indie royalty” for seeking to “solidify the borders of what is acceptable, not to broaden them.” But that’s just Pitchfork being lame.

The success of this album is in the way it approaches the seemingly impossible task of fabricating honest emotions. The songs do gas-up on emotion, but not on the cheap. In talking to English majors who feel slightly guilty about their “Twilight” addictions, they always say—almost to themselves—that author Stephanie Meyer knows something about the human heart. The songs seem to capture this, too.

To fully explain this, let me draw on a recent movie. Fans of Spike Jonze’s “Where the Wild Things Are” claim the film makes them feel “like kids again.” I also felt like a kid—like a kid stuffed stupid with boredom from patronizing adults in bear costumes. You can see the zipper, so to speak.

But the “New Moon” soundtrack is the opposite. Nearly every song, from Death Cab For Cutie’s delightfully eerie opener, “Meet Me on the Equinox” to Bon Iver’s collaboration with St. Vincent on “Roslyn,” captures a real, beating heart. When Anya Marina sings on “Satellite Heart” that she’s “lost in the dark / I’m spun out so far” she doesn’t merely transport you back to the high school study hall where such simplifications were worth fighting for, she makes these things feel consequential again.

I’m not certain why the record “works.” Maybe it’s because the artists—all now variably of the adult contemporary genre—can now sympathize with their own, long-ago existence as fangless, teenage vampires, just looking for a good song to help them through to the next morning. Sort of like believing in Bigfoot, without the nasty cryptozoology debates about whether he exists or not.

Oh, and about that Bigfoot sighting. In truth, Patterson didn’t film Bigfoot. In fact, he didn’t even film some sci-fi huckster in a zip-up suit. But, if you look closely enough, you can see what Patterson actually caught on tape was the Gregory Gorillas’ mascot walking home from a rough night at the bar following the football team’s loss to Winner.

The revolution will not be hoaxed.

Thanks to Cousin Christopher for the review.