Album Review: Various - The Boy Castaways Original Soundtrack

The soundtrack album without the visuals to give the sounds a reference point can sometimes be confusing. The screenshots and trailers for Michael Kantor's dark and theatrical movie tend to suggest a touch of the Baz Luhrmanns on a beer budget, but that could be balanced by the choice of real musicians in most of the central roles. They're big and distinctive personalities as well: Tim Rogers in full foppish luvvie mode, Paul Capsis a changeable chameleon and the luminous Megan Washington variously seductive, mysterious or dangerous.

Musically, you'll probably just skim past the little incidental musics for the big dramatic set pieces, where composer Boom Crash Opera's Pete Farnan has recast and rearranged some variously known songs to drive the narrative. Thus, The Psychedelic Furs' Love My Way is an anthemic – if frayed – duet between Timmy and Megs, on circus swings no less. Capsis' makes Dr John's I Walk On Gilded Splinters questioning, while Rogers' take on Quasimodo's Dream is toweringly broken – you wonder why this connection of artist and song hadn't been made before.

But the 'hit' – or at least main talking point – will likely be Washington's Don't Stop, where Fleetwood Mac's optimism becomes something more melancholy and wishful. It gently aches. Again, it might all come down to whether the film sinks or flies as to whether this becomes a fond souvenir or just a sidetrack oddity.