We’re less than a month away from the release of “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse,” much to the excitement of your little sister and mom, and following the release of the lead single from the soundtrack, Muse’s “Neutron Star Collision,” the soundtrack, which hits stores next Tuesday, is now available for pre-order on the record’s official site.
The whole album was streaming on the same site, but now seems to have been taken down (probably because tech-savvy listeners ripped the songs and they are now all over YouTube). We weren’t huge fans of the similarly indie-rock-heavy “New Moon” soundtrack despite a couple of strong tracks, most notably Lykke Li’s “Possibility,” and we stand by our view that these compilations are cash-in Now That’s What I Call Indie Rock type deals, but “Eclipse” is a rather better listen.
There’s still a few B-side level tracks (The Dead Weather and Band of Horses’ contributions seem a little weak) and questionable picks — we can’t stand Muse’s sub-Queen nonsense but we get the logic of including them, but The Bravery? Really? Is this 2004 suddenly? However, the line-up of bands is generally much stronger, and there’s some stand-out tracks from Metric, Florence & The Machine, The Black Keys and Vampire Weekend.
Two of the bonus tracks on the deluxe edition from Battles and Bombay Bicycle Club are better than most of the songs on “New Moon,” while the undeniable highlight is the Beck/Bat For Lashes collaboration “Let’s Get Lost” (listen below). We’re still a little uneasy with the nature of the whole thing, but we suppose if it helps wean the tweens off bands with punctuation marks in their names like Ke$ha or 3OH!3, then it can only be a good thing, right? Take a look at the full tracklisting here.