A Mighty Wind OST

Featuring songs pastiched in styles ranging from the cod-trad standard ‘Blood On The Coal’ (“Old ’97 went in the wrong hole… now there’s blood on the coal”) to faux-Tin Pan Alley folk and white-bread psychedelia, this soundtrack is defined by the movie’s three fictional bands. The Folksmen get all the best lines, hamming it up Kinks-style on ‘Loco Man’, extracting the urine from the overwrought metaphors of the Leonard Cohen-alike political spoof ‘Skeletons Of Quinto’ (“The silver tentacles of the Moon’s rays call to me”) or revealing how plainly godawful Mick Jagger’s lyrics can be in an evil rendition of ‘Start Me Up’. The Main Street Singers, a ‘neuftet’ with nine tongues firmly ensconced in nine cheeks, harmonise on the irreligiously funny ‘The Good Book Song’ and embody the dictionary definition of twee hilariously on ‘Just That Kinda Say’ (“I like clouds, I always will”). However the songs of the Simon & Cher/Sonny & Garfunkel duo, Mitch and Mickey, are at best accurate ’60s folk-pop but at worst – ‘A Kiss At The End Of The Rainbow’ – represent folk-lite so listless and bland it would struggle to get onto Lyric FM’s coma-time playlist. The meticulous attention to the authenticity of the music makes the humour that much more cutting. Whether this album can stand on its own merits without the background story the film provides is debatable. Then again neither could other classic piss-takes like Spinal Tap’s Smell The Glove, Meet The Rutles or Permission To Land by The Darkness (oh wait, that last one’s meant to be real).