Evolution, especially musical evolution is a extreme rarity in TV. Think about it, how many of your favorite shows have made you sit up and take notice of the music, season after season? You can cite Miami Vice and Grey’s Anatomy as examples, but thats not really true, they put in pop songs that the show never created, in sense keeping pace with the time period, but listen to a Vice soundtrack today and its classic rock, it has aged and in some cases, aged badly.
But as a score goes, I am racking my brain trying to see if another series has ever grown musically as much as Battlestar Galactica’s has in the past 3 years. Bear McCreary has done an outstanding job, perhaps the finest evolution in TV history. Season 1 was about as minimal as one could get, the music was dark and very sparse, Season 2 was a bit more fuller sounding wise, but a too military and still dark as night.
This season,the gloves are off,this is just a lovely, heartbreaking,exciting piece of music. Bear has featured the best music among the past season’s episode’s, some are classical pieces,”Violence and Variations”,some feature the lovely Scottish bagpipes,”Admiral and Commander” and my personal favorite was the mixture of Middle Eastern with Japanese Taiko drum on “Precipice”. On “Precipice” the thundering building for nearly 5 minutes has you in a Viper, scanning the heavens above, looking and waiting for a confrontation you can’t avoid but are eager to embrace.
This by far is the most compelling score I have listened to this year and after McCreary finishes the last season of BG, I think any big studio who wants a movie to MOVE, needs to hire Bear straightway.
Highly recommended.
By Michael Sullivan
