Film soundtracks were never something anyone used to pay particular attention to in the past, but these days the huge range of world conquering acts getting involved to score pictures is making them big business. The latest movie to follow in the footsteps of Twilight, The Hunger Games & 50 Shades Of Grey, is Insurgent, the next instalment of the divergent series and they managed to get Haim and M83 to collaborate on a track just for them.
‘Holes In The Sky’ is great. And when I say great, I mean it’s incredibly great. So much so that within only four hours of it surfacing online, my play count on it had already hit triple figures…
Haim’s catalogue of work is predominantly as excitable as a little kid pepped up on sugar, but they seem to have taken many a leaf out of the book of M83 when it comes to ‘Holes In The Sky’. It’s almost as if someone gave the sisters a hefty dose of Ritalin to calm them down for five minutes.
Taking the lead vocal, Danielle Haim has banished her snarl and set down her precious guitar for these few minutes and become the most zen human in the world. Her voice rarely raises raises in volume, allowing the strings surrounding her and the harmonies provided by her sisters Alana and Este, to construct the landscape around them. As the drums kick in, the sisters transcend this earth and begin their ascent into the stars. The scaling back of their collective vocal is like nothing they have worked on so far, and in that, this grandiose orchestral yet totally subtle ballad reaffirms the fact that Haim still haven’t given anyone any reason to doubt just how much talent they still have to unleash on the world.
I don’t even need to hear the rest of the soundtrack for this film to know that ‘Holes In The Sky’ would blow them all out of the water. M83’s production on this track is a mere pedestal upon which to hold Haim’s majestic power. Pairing’s of unlikely artists often falls a little flat for myself, but this, this is magical.
There has been criticism that by Haim’s normal mile a minute banger standards, this track is ‘boring’ and ‘too scaled back’ for the trio, and whilst I can agree it’s not as fast paced, I draw the line at the boring comments because when a track can instil so much feeling in a person as this track does, it can be called anything but boring.
