MICHAEL ANDREWS +V/A: Me and You and Everyone We Know

Michael Andrews +V/A

Me and You and Everyone We Know

© 2005 Everloving, Inc. (181229000221)

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From the composer of Donnie Darko, the score to the critically acclaimed Me and You and Everyone We know. Also includes tracks by Cody Chesnutt, Spiritualized and Virginia Astley.

notes

Michael Andrews
Me and You and Everyone We Know

The most successful art is often unplanned, and for Michael Andrews, composing the score for a film as unique as Me and You and Everyone We Know was just another in a long series of happy accidents.

Andrews fell into film score composition by chance when the band he was playing with-cult soul/jazz collective The Greyboy Allstars-was asked to score Jake Kasdan's first feature, The Zero Effect. One year later, Andrews got hired to write the music for the highly regarded, though short-lived TV show, Freaks and Geeks (NBC), and soon after, he landed the score for indie film hit, Donnie Darko. Andrews considers himself primarily a guitar player, but Darko's director, Richard Kelly, told him he didn't want any guitar in the movie. So, he taught himself to play piano by ear. It's part of the reason that the score is, as Andrews describes, so simple. "In a way," he says, "your faults become your trademark." Darko's original score album went on to sell over 100,000 copies (in part because of Andrews' remake of Tears for Fears' Mad World, featuring Gary Jules), and Andrews became a composer to watch.

Andrews, who talks at warp speed with an infectious, nervous enthusiasm, is really part composer, part producer (recent albums include Inara George's critically acclaimed album All Rise, and Metric's Old World Underground), and part performer. He heard about Miranda July's Me and You and Everyone We Know when he ran into the husband of producer Gina Kwan (with whom he went to college) at a party. Kwan's husband praised July's exceptional script, and so Andrews asked for a copy. It blew him away.

Coincidentally, during that time, July had been listening to the Darko score, which she loved. "I would die to work with this person," she thought, but assumed Andrews was out of her league; still she began strategizing ways to approach him anyway. Based on his interest in the script, Andrews arranged to meet July. He was then working on material for a new solo album, and when they met and July heard some early tracks from his record, she was all the more convinced he was perfect for her film.

Andrews and July share similar outsider backgrounds. Andrews does not have any formal music composition training, and July, though she had made a few short films prior to Me and You, had been known primarily for her writing and performance art. July knew that she wanted the music to not to sound "like movie music," and to sound as if someone who didn't quite know how to play music had played it. As if the music was somehow a mistake that worked. It's a theme that provides a thread throughout the film: people come together accidentally but they must make a conscious decision to act after fate has done its part.

Initially taking cues from the characters' dialog, Andrews began writing the score. For example, when Richard, played in the film by John Hawkes, says he's "prepared for amazing things to happen" and that he wants his kids "to have magical powers," Andrews came to understand the film's world as a kind of alternate reality where people believe in fate and chance-and this was the world he needed to paint with his music. He also saw the feelings July was trying to get across in her film as very primary. "She tries to break things down to very basic, simple shapes-the simplest shapes possible, and that totally influenced me in my music."

Working out of his custom-built backyard studio in Glendale, CA, Andrews spent three months creating the score using an orchestra of obscure vintage synthesizers (a miniature hotwired Casio keyboard was unearthed at a garage sale for $10) and drum machines. His concept was to play what he termed amateurish, emotional, naïve, magical and simple music on highly unemotional, inorganic instruments-for example, a calculator with built-in twelve-note keyboard that lends a haunting portamento melody to one of the film's motifs.

Other instruments used in the score include Andrews' modified piano (rather than hitting the strings directly, the hammers first make contact with a piece of soft felt, creating a warmer, slightly muffled tone), as well as his Moog and Vocoder synthesizers. Despite all the electronic gear, no MIDI was used in the recording, so that all the humanness, all the subtle variations of rhythm, are intact. Inara George adds vocals in several climactic moments throughout the film. In some cases, cues were composed of only two or three tracks in order to attain the magical simplicity for which the film called out.

As with many film scores, it took some time for composer and director to learn each other's languages. Gradually, Andrews and July began to "get in tune with each other's psyche," a process he refers to as paralleling that of the film's characters, who are each struggling in their own ways to communicate. "It was like he was channeling me," says July. "It's a movie about connecting, and not being able to connect, and we had to live through that-that's where the music came from."

Large portions of the score were written, then tossed out, and written again, and while the iterative process of film scoring can be frustrating, Andrews felt lucky to have the time to make sure the tone was exactly right. Both Andrews and July are obsessive perfectionists; but over the course of the collaboration, they came to recognize and respect each other's instincts. When something "accidentally fit perfectly," Andrews says, "that's when we said, that's it."

Or, as July says of the music's effect on the film, "It was like seeing something you'd only dreamt of right in front of you."

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reviews

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  • Lovely!
    author: Katja

    the movie and its soundtrack go together so very well! love the sounds and melodies, and I am always especially delighted, when original voices and/or dialogues of movies are mixed into their soundtrack releases. cody chestnutts bad tuning at some parts of his song, though, is not so lovely. normally I am not picky about that, but here it bugs me, because it seems deliberate.

  • Sui generis
    author: Sabrina

    It has been three years since I have come across such a curious concinnity of pieces within a score. Each seems to seamlessly fall into the other - a striking commingling - when in essence, one is so flung apart from the next (compare "Goldfish" to "What's That Sound"). Every piece extrudes the most visceral response, inspiring as well as unfolding the depth of the concomitant screenplay.

  • Tenderloin steak
    author: Sid

    This album delivers exactly what you'd expect, all the songs that you heard in the motion picture. I have a really crappy TV, so when I heard the songs the bass portions were all blurry and blown out. Real crappy stuff. Listening to the songs on some decent speakers really changes the experience. Additionally, and I'm not sure whether I should review a CD based on this or not, CD Baby sent a KICK-ASS-MOTHER-DOG cd full of demos featuring previous stuff from Micheal Andrews and other way-too-rad-for-you artists. It was good enough that I got the soundtrack, but throwing that in too was a real treat. Thanks guys!

  • This Cd is * * * * *
    author: Sandra

    I have seen with a very special person the film "Me and you and everyone we know". Since the beginning i liked the film and the way that it sounded. I really loved its beauty and its poetry. Well, everything in this film has been fascinating, but the soundtrack really surprised me. I like to hear all musics! Congratulations Miranda July and Michael Andrews!!!

  • jaunty, delicious, heartfelt and real
    author: pinkdots&things

    this soundtrack album is a real swinger. it swings from jaunty emotive bleeps to delicious, heartfelt songs such as spiritualised's contribution. just like the film itself, the soundtrack to the film me and you and everyone we know is a real voyage into a sometimes elusive but somehow tangable emotional experience. brilliant.

  • this cd is full-filiing
    author: ^^

    i couldn't ask for more, the music is great. it's so complete. it really gets in you. WOW

  • perfect!
    author: martina tso

    I am from Hong Kong. I watched this movie in Hong Kong Film Festival in April and I was surprised that this CD included "When I call a name" and "5 on a joyride", because these are my favourite songs!!

  • this soundtrack is the new escalator to heaven.
    author: you(we) know

    me and you and everyone we know will be quite pleased with the outcome of this score. and i totally scored with this one!

  • spend every morning with this cd and life will be beautiful
    author: Anna Chiaretta

    I am in love with the film, and Miranda July. Consquently this cd was an essential purchase. I beyond highly recommend it. First see the film, then buy the cd, listen to it on the subway or walking down the street. and just let the smile you feel boiling up inside explode to the surface. just dig in. When you see me with headphones on and pure bliss on my face, you know this cd is playing into my ears.

  • Soundtrack is great on its own and adds depth beyond the movie's experience
    author: Andrea Todd

    The music stands on its own outside of the movie because it has an emotional strength. With only a few lyric-based songs it takes the listener into the emotions through the sounds. The music contains creative melodies with some similar lines that connect the pieces.

  • Top dollar
    author: Lucy Musgrove

    I hunted this CD down after watching the film and I am really glad I did, it's excellent . Captures the essence of the film perfectly and worth having even if you haven't seen the film.

  • Very moving and laid back songs that recreate the atmosphere of the movie
    author: SuperErnie

    I don't buy a lot of soundtracks, but this movie was very special for me and I just really wanted to 'relive' it by listening to its music. The songs come from some sort of electronic keyboard I guess, with all kind of wonderfully weird sound effects. In my imagination Michael Andrews has been creating these sounds deep down in his basement for the last 15 years or something. The melodies are very laid back, they help to get me in a very relaxed mood. At the same time they are really moving, like one of my favorite tracks, 'Signs'. Also the soundtrack introduced me to singer Cody ChesnuTT, who really blows my socks off with his very intimate way of singing '5 On A Joyride.' I had never heard of him before, but now I'm seriously considering buying his 2003 CD called 'The Headphone Masterpiece.' I do miss something on this CD, though. It would have been nice to hear some more of the wonderful dialogues from the movie. Yet on the whole a wonderful album, which I'm gonna play a lot.

  • Buy this CD
    author: Kim in L.A.

    Although I really loved Miranda July's movie, this CD is an entity in itself. Listening to it makes me introspective in a way that life does and makes me laugh in a way that life should when I start taking things too seriously. So great. Thanks, Michael Andrews!

  • puts me back in the movie
    author: Tara

    While I await this wonderful film to open up in my small Canadian town, I have this record to keep me company. I didn't realize how strong the soundtrack was while watching the film at Sundance; here it puts me right back to the corresponding scene. And including Miranda's opening monologue at the beginning was smart. I love the simplicity of the sndtrk, Michael evokes much with little.

  • all that i had hoped for...
    author: ~alison

    this soundtrack gives me *the feeling*...kind of like i'm looking at the world through a thin piece of gauze...there's something to be said for that. buy this and you will see.

  • author: mallpitas

    Ambient, moody, bouyant, minimalist electronica. Melodic unusual Casiotone sound. Mixed multipulse squarewaves sent through capacitor filters. Reminiscent of Music for Airports by Eno or Nathan Larson's work on Storytelling maybe even the Big Comfy Couch TV show. Like the film, it gives you the vague feeling that the slightest movement may unhinge something.

  • as great as the movie.
    author: mattioni

    really nice score...not overly done. true to its film.

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