Death Proof: The Soundtrack

One thing that is reliable about the films of Quentin Tarantino: they will have a kick-ass soundtrack. The soundtracks for Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill are among my favorites in my collection, and having a seventies-weekend on the radio as the musical bed for Reservoir Dogs is a gas. The music for Death Proof, Tarantino's half of the double-feature that is Grindhouse, is no exception, and I received it as a birthday present the other day.

As with his other films, Tarantino uses some forgotten hits from the sixties and seventies, some music from other movies (again utilizing Ennio Morricone) and throws in a few lines of dialogue from the film itself (it's nice on Pulp Fiction to have the discussion of the relative charm of pigs and dogs included on the soundtrack). Death Proof kicks off with a genre that Tarantino loves, the surf & spy, with a hard-driving track called The Last Race by Jack Nitzsche. There's also a great song in this style toward the end of the disc, called Riot in Thunder Alley by Eddie Beram, which includes some fantastic tribal-like drumming.

Of the songs from jukeboxes past, there's the slyly infectious Jeepster, by T. Rex, a gritty number by The Coasters called Down in Mexico, and a song called Hold Tight by a sixties British band called Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich. As steeped as I am in sixties music, I am ashamed to say I have never heard of them before, and the song is a classic nugget of sixties garage band music.

There's also a couple of covered tunes, such as Smith's take on Burt Bacharach's Baby, It's You and a charming and cheesy version of Serge Gainsbourg's Chick Habit by April March.

Tarantino has long been rumored that he will be making a World War II picture. The problem with this idea is that he won't be able to tap into his knowledge of music from the last forty years, unless he is going to be gleefully anachronistic.