Filmtracks: An American Pickle (Nami Melumad/Michael Giacchino)

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Written 2/15/21

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Buy it... if you have no qualms about the plundering of Jewish stereotypes in music, Michael Giacchino's themes and Nami Melumad's score intelligently and humorously extending these klezmer traditions into modern absurdity.

Avoid it... if over-saturated ethnic comedy music makes your nose wrinkle up worse than the smell of a jar of pickles, this score certainly unique in its bizarre personality.

Giacchino

An American Pickle: (Nami Melumad/Michael Giacchino) Note to self: If you want to freeze yourself in time for a hundred years to witness another century, all you need to do is allow yourself to be brined in a sealed vat of pickles. That's the premise of the Seth Rogan production An American Pickle, the preposterous comedy telling of a 1919 Eastern European Jewish immigrant, Herschel, who brings his family to America only to suffer that fate at a pickle factory. He is preserved unaged until 2019, when he awakens unharmed and seeks out his lone descendant in the country. Disappointed by the lazy app developer his grandson turns out to be, Herschel strives to resurrect his career to buy out an offensive billboard near his family's grave site. He and his grandson go to war, taking turns sabotaging each other and eventually devolving into swapping identities and deportation. The asinine humor of An American Pickle comes mostly from the "fish out of water" scenarios of a 1919 man with an expertise in pickles learning to adapt to 2019 society and fighting his extraordinary prejudices along the way. Indeed, much of the charm of the story comes from politically incorrect jokes about Jews, Russians, and the likes. Rogan plays both lead roles himself as well. With a relatively novice group of filmmakers around him, it's intriguing that composer Michael Giacchino became attached to the picture and wrote the themes for its score. To flesh out the rest of the score, he and the filmmakers approached young television composer Nami Melumad, who had submitted separately to work on the film. For Melumad, the opportunity to collaborate with Giacchino was unexpected and at first overwhelming, though their successful working relationship led them to share duties on the "Medal of Honor" video game continuation in 2020, too. Fortunately, Melumad had some experience with klezmer-styled music associated widely with Jewish culture, so she was able to adapt the more veteran composer's themes of that genre with care. It's not often you hear film scores pilfer Jewish stereotypes in a comedy setting, so the authenticity with which Giacchino and Melumad accomplish the task in An American Pickle is an entertaining diversion from the mass of mundane soundtracks generated in the era.

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The musical traditions of Eastern Europe Jews in the music for An American Pickle could be met with embrace or disdain by a listener, but few could argue that it isn't executed well in this context. The instrumental highlighting of clarinet, violin, balalaika, and tambourine in klezmer rhythms are accentuated by acoustic guitar, electric bass, and tuba to extend and modernize the cheekiness of the sound for a comedic farce. By the more dramatically oriented end of the story, piano, harp, and fuller strings take the forefront. The general personality is what you'd expect if you took John Williams' Eastern European stylings from The Terminal and infused it with pure Danny Elfman quirkiness. If you want to smash yourself in the face with the most outrageous expression of this wild Jewish tone led by clarinet, behold the latter half of "Klezmer Fight Club," one of the funniest film score cues in recent memory. While the instrumentation, rhythmic figures, and other characteristics of the performance will likely steal the show for most listeners, the loyalty that Melumad shows to Giacchino's main themes is really the intellectual attraction. Giacchino's contribution to the score is summed up in the thematic suite, "Pickles, Suite or Sour" that closes out the album and served as the basis from which Melumad worked. The suite is one of Giacchino's best compositions, so full of charm and wit as it pilfers klezmer traditions repeatedly for four minutes. It establishes the tone perfectly for the film and is genuinely affable from start to finish. The thematic material in this suite is split into the main sequence and an interlude, both frequently adapted by Melumad in the rest of the score. The main theme opens with a three-note phrase familiar to several John Williams scores and dominates the suite, though the equally engaging interlude heard at 1:21 and 2:07, the latter immense in size, is not to be missed. As strong as Giacchino's base material is in this suite, Melumad must earn significant praise for her adept adaptations and extension of these ideas in the rest of the score. She gets tremendous mileage out of these themes, intelligently adapting their phrasing and tone to match the extreme swings of emotional responses that Herschel experiences. By the dramatic conclusion to the film, "Joining the Kaddish" and "Denouement to Be" finally alter the omnipresent, first three notes of the main theme to support an evolved identity for Herschel with a more contemplative and less declarative persona.

Giacchino's main theme for An American Pickle is immediately established at 0:13 and throughout "Workin' For Love in All the Wrong Places," initially following the suite's blueprint fairly closely. It changes pretty quickly, however, adapted into an angry variant early in "New World Problems," somber strings only in "The Lonely Herschel Club," and its first three notes generated an underlying rhythm in "Who Gives a Boo Boop" and "Pickle Your Fancy." The theme becomes a military march in "The Fall and Rise of Herschel's Twitter" and is almost "Disneyfied" (or "Menkenized," if you will) by the end of "Denouement to Be." The interlude sequence from Giacchino is treated as something of a separate identity by Melumad, its repeated descending phrases utilized at 0:33 into "Workin' For Love in All the Wrong Places," with sensitive wonderment at 1:29 into "A Greenbaum Family Reunion" and at 1:28 into "Yes You Canada" and as a poignant conclusion to a crescendo at 2:00 into "Joining the Kaddish." These two themes exist almost everywhere in between, their adaptations as constant as the clarinet and violin solos. Melumad does occasionally offer other ideas in the mix, including a 1950's science-fiction-inspired stinger of bloated horror at the outsets of "New World Problems" and "Klezmer Fight Club." Other moments of interest include an excellent action sequence at the end of "Pickle Your Fancy" and the pure Elfman influence in the progressions and instrumentation of "The Pickle Empire Strikes Back." For listeners hoping to hear a little more of Giacchino's established mannerisms in this score, there's a bit of action humor from The Incredibles that sneaks into "The Greenbaum Switcheroo." The overall narrative of the score is well developed, especially as the work switches to straight drama in its final cues. Much of the charm and humor is frontloaded on the album, with the exception of the Giacchino suite at the end, and even though there is little wrong with the more intimate passages late in the score, the humorous klezmer plundering early on is where you'll want to return. One significant detraction inherited by Melumad (aside, of course, from the consistently ridiculous cue titles typical to most Giacchino works) is an incredibly dry and flat mix that is a trademark of Giacchino recordings. This score needed more space in the soundscape, and enhanced reverb for the balalaika and tambourine, and likely the clarinet and tuba as well, would have made a big difference in accentuating the bloated humor of the music's personality. Even restrained in its sonic scope, though, An American Pickle is an admirable, smile-inducing pleasure of intelligent design. **** @Amazon.com: CD or Download

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For Michael Giacchino reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.46 (in 43 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.21 (in 23,476 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.

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