My Uncle Greg gave me a copy of this movie on VHS a year or two after it came out. I fell in love with it after the first watching. One of the reasons I love this movie so much is the music. Very often when I put this movie on it's just for the audio.
I happened to stumble across The Commitments soundtrack at a low price while I was in college. I remember there was a day I popped into the discount department store I worked for and loaded up on bargin bin albums. I grabbed six or seven in all, and many of which I've even reviewed at this point. I discovered that as much as I like the soundtrack, I would still rather listen to the movie. It's a sound quality thing, mixed with the actual movie's story.
All the tracks on this album are performed, by The Commitments, which is the band from the movie. So it makes the album a really cool cover album of sorts.
The first song on the album is Mustang Sally. I don't mind this track, and find it very fun and enjoyable, but it's not one of my favourites. In fact my biggest bitch about the movie is how many times this song plays throughout it. I know the original from Mack Rice, and this version is very fair and honest to it.
Take Me To The River is a great song, and I don't know if I've ever heard Al Green's original version. However, I do enjoy cranking this song and singing along. It's just a really good track.I love Chain Of Fools. Most of it comes from the female vocals on the song. Maria Doyle, as Natalie Murphy, gives a performance that is amazingly sexy, vocally. It sounds exactly like a Soul singer should sound. Also the sax performance on this one is really good too.
The Dark End Of The Street is one of those songs that I understand why people love it, but it's just not for me. It's a beautifully slow number, full of sweet lonesome passion. I would probably karaoke this one for fun, and would have no issues performing it in a live band every night, but I would never listen to it on my own.
I laugh my ass off everytime I hear Destination Anywhere on this album, since it was in the movie for about a minute, and it was pretty much the group singing along with a version being played on the train that they were riding on. It's not a song I'm into, but I love it in the movie. It's one of those moments when you see the band start to come together. This is also one of two songs performed by someone that was not in the movie, Niamh Kavanagh. I'm not sure why this is the case.
Musically I think I Can't Stand The Rain is awesome. The feel and vibe to the song is wicked cool, and the Janis Joplin like vocals are a nice touch too. My only complaint about this song is that it's a bit over produced sounding. The beauty of the movie is how the band pretty much only plays live, and the only talk of studio recordings is at the end of the movie in a post script dialogue, so this song shouldn't sound like it came from a studio.
Try A Little Tenderness is one of those songs that I have to be in the right mood for, at least when listening to the CD. The flavour and pacing of this song has a great slow build up, but it's that build up that puts me off. However, when the song hits 2:39 and kicks into full throtle my head starts banging like I'm rocking Bohemian Rapsody. I mean you can't help but get your groove going to this one.
Treat Her Right is performed by Robert Arkins, who plays Jimmy Rabbitte, the guy who manages The Commitments and puts the band together, but never officially sings in the movie. This is a great boogie number that gets your foot tapping and your body bouncing.
Do Right Woman, Do Right Man is the other song performed by Niamh Kavanagh. This is a song originally made famous by Aretha Franklin, and to be honest I've never been a fan of most of her work. I respect it, but don't generally care for it.
Mr. Pitiful is a fun upbeat number, but it's not my cup of tea. It's much better in the movie than on this album. However, this is one of those songs I would be interested in redoing, but doing kind of different. I'd love to hear it re-arranged into a punk track.
I Never Loved A Man is a little slow, and is a typical female vocalist kind of song. Although my only real complaint about his song is that it sounds a little more Country Western that Soul. I do love how much guitar work you get to hear on this song, though. Most of the time on both the soundtrack and in the movie the guitar gets lost in the mix.
My favourite song on this album is In The Midnight Hour, which really sucks since it's the second shortest track on the album at 2:24. I would have loved to have heard this song extended with some musical performance slipped in. I have to say that Andrew Strong, as Deco, kills this one. Even more impressive since he was only 16 at the time, and is the primary male vocalist on this album.
Bye Bye Baby is an okay song. Originally by Mary Wells this track sounds like it would be a Pointer Sisters song, and I was never really into those girl groups.
Slip Away finishes off the album. It's an okay track, and I know people that would like it, and enjoy it more than I do. There's nothing wrong with the song, it's just a little too laid back for my liking.
All in all I would say that you should go out and buy the movie, and enjoy the songs as they were meant to be heard, live. All the music parts in the movie were recorded live to tape and are much better sounding than what you get on this album. However, if you want to get a fix for this music, by all means pick up this album and enjoy.
7/10 - content
7/10 - production
6/10 - personal bias
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