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Review of Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (Hans Zimmer/Bryan Adams)

FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:

Buy it... if you are either a Bryan Adams fangirl or a Hans Zimmer fanboy, because there's really nothing on this album to offer anyone else.

Avoid it... if you don't think that Zimmer's usual lathering of simplistic orchestral melodrama, mixed so heavily that it really sounds no different from his synthetics, is appropriate for the Western genre.

FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron: (Hans Zimmer/Bryan Adams) One of the more anonymous animation films of the 2000's is Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, a generic horse-related tale that relates well to young girls but offers little of intellectual interest to adults. Other than strong animated visuals, the film's only redeeming aspect resides in the fact that animals in this story cannot speak for themselves. With minimal dialogue from only three human characters, the Wild West tale relies more on its soundtrack than many of its contemporary counterparts. Some consider Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron to be a musical, which isn't entirely accurate since the characters in the film aren't actually shown singing. But the most memorable aspect of the film for most viewers will be the perpetual use of Bryan Adams' voice to narrate the film through his songs. The production turned out to be a vehicle for the artist, whose career had lost some its steam by 2002. Marking his regular return to the genre of animated filmmaking, Hans Zimmer co-wrote some of the songs and provided most of the score material (along with some of the usual Media Ventures help) in an attempt to recapture the popularity and success of his premiere such effort, The Lion King. In the series of popular merging of pop culture music artists and major animated films, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron follows the same thought process as The Lion King (Elton John) and Tarzan (Phil Collins), for which the pop artist combines efforts with the traditional film composer to write the songs for the musical. Zimmer had produced work for both pop music animated films and more orchestrally-inclined endeavors, with The Prince of Egypt serving as a enduringly popular example of the latter. If the balance between story and music is well enough maintained, then Zimmer can flourish in both settings, whether or not a pop artist is involved in the project.

Zimmer's own experience in the rock genre affords him the vocabulary, connections, and talents to mingle well with big name solo artists. The raspy-voiced Adams, whose younger-sounding and defiant style of singing lent him well to the spirit of the stallion, was a suitable match for this occasion. The choice of Adams as the pop artist for Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, however, while deemed by multiple critics to be an obnoxious source of irritation within the film, is not alone the reason why the music for the film strikes all the wrong notes. In these animated pictures with pop music, the success of both the music and the film depends upon the balance of the weight of one over the other. In films such as The Lion King and Tarzan, for instance, the needs of the film dictated the structure and instrumentation of the songs. When choosing the vocal inflections, the background acoustics, and the introductory and ending structures of the songs, the film's storyboard was the center of attention in that creative process. The best comparison for this film is Tarzan, for which Phil Collins had to speak for the characters through his own voice. In that score, Collins and Zimmer associate Mark Mancina created songs that fit the context of each scene, and they later rearranged those songs to fit the needs of the album release. For Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, it's easy to get the impression that the exact opposite happened. In other words, the Adams songs sound as though they were written as fully intact album-arranged presentations, and then the film was brought in to supplement them. Thus, the needs of the songs outweighed the needs of the film, and that causes the film score listener to wonder if the album wasn't produced before the animation process even commenced. The songs, for the most part, are decent, typical entries for Adams, with no smash hits, and only one driving guitar in "Get Off My Back" that breaks the combined attitude of the other songs.

On the whole, the songs are streamlined and predictable, a delight most certainly for Adams' fangirls and likely a bore for everyone else. The over-commercialization effect of Adams' songs is a major contribution to the tedious nature of the overall musical package for Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, but Zimmer's contribution is unfortunately flawed as well. Zimmer did have a hand in the creation and sound of some of the songs (and it should be noted that beginning with "This is Where I Belong" on the album, the songs do follow a more normalized musical format), though any hint of the enthusiasm or epic size that was evident in The Lion King or The Prince of Egypt is completely missing here. Perhaps the most confusing part of the score for Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron is how a predominantly Western-themed film ended up with faux-Gladiator music that has been mixed with such a heavy dose of Media Ventures testosterone that it sounds synthetic rather than orchestrally dynamic. For instance, the recording of "The Long Road Back" is so "popified" that it sounds like a clone of the highly rhythmic battle hymns in Toys. In this cue, Zimmer inserts about a minute of fiddle performances, but aside from some rather somber accompaniment from Gavin Greenaway's orchestra, this is the only distinctly fresh and authentic-sounding orchestral instrumentation to appear in the whole project. If you're going to a film to watch horses (animated or otherwise) gallop across a grand view of the Western American Rockies, then why does the music sound like it was pulled from The Peacemaker? Zimmer's attempt to produce a Western score is so dependant upon his heavy mixing techniques, led by an overwhelming bass region, that even with small tidbits of rhythm stereotypical to the genre thrown in once in a while (as well as a nod or two to Zimmer favorite Ennio Morricone), the package is a failure. There are several sequences in the score that are very enjoyable in usual Zimmer fashion, yes, but they don't fit with the songs and they certainly don't fit with the genre.

The album was obviously viewed by the label as a potential commercial juggernaut at the record stores. And for Adams fans, it remains as something of a solo album for ample enjoyment. But for the same reasons of conflicting interests and inappropriate song structure, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron was never going to capture the same kind of rush of popularity from film score fans and parents of children that The Lion King or Tarzan attracted. It's a major disappointment for those hoping for Zimmer to break out of his rut of providing historically inaccurate music (which had been so painful in Pearl Harbor the previous year). It didn't help that the production had elevated expectations by rousingly using Jerry Goldsmith's themes from Rudy in its early trailers. The only connection between Goldsmith and Zimmer's work here is Zimmer's adoption of Goldsmith's electronic swishing sound from the early 1990's (famous in The Shadow) as means of replacing the cymbals during transitional or accented notes. Overall, nearly everything about Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron is saturated with the commercialization of Adams' contribution, his voice attached to 11 of the 15 tracks of the album, and too many of those songs are disassociated from the film to be affective with Zimmer's contribution. Die hard Zimmer fans will find cues of merit in the 20 minutes of score for Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron presented on the album, including the opening titles ("Homeland"), even though they sound like the bastard child of the themes from The Rock and Toys. Such enthusiasts often trade a 40 to 50-minute bootleg of score-only material from the film, containing additional music and film versions of these cues. But there's nothing new enough here to gain the interest of general film music collectors. All you have to do is take a look at the supposedly sexy picture of Adams in the insert to immediately understand why people who listen to classic Western film music consider items like Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron to be a waste of time.  **

TRACK LISTINGS:

Total Time: 60:01

• 1. Here I Am (End Title) - performed by Bryan Adams (4:44) • 2. I Will Always Return - performed by Bryan Adams (3:58) • 3. You Can't Take Me - performed by Bryan Adams (2:56) • 4. Get Off My Back - performed by Bryan Adams (2:50) • 5. Brothers Under the Sun - performed by Bryan Adams (3:57) • 6. Don't Let Go - performed by Bryan Adams and Sarah McLachlan (4:02) • 7. This is Where I Belong - performed by Bryan Adams (2:21) • 8. Here I Am - performed by Bryan Adams (4:32) • 9. Sound the Bugle - performed by Bryan Adams (3:54) • 10. Run Free (score) (6:21) • 11. Homeland (Main Title) (score) (3:41) • 12. Rain (score) (2:50) • 13. The Long Road Back (score) (7:11) • 14. Nothing I've Ever Known - performed by Bryan Adams (3:52) • 15. I Will Always Return (Finale) - performed by Bryan Adams (2:46)

NOTES & QUOTES:

The insert includes lyrics for all of the songs, which allows you to realize just how simplistic they are. Extensive credits are also provided, along with a solemn picture of a confused-looking "BA." No extra information about the film or score is provided.

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