Okay, here's a musical brain teaser: what do Claude Debussy, Elvis Presley, Quincy Jones, Percy Faith, and the Handsome Boy Modeling School have in common? Absolutely nothing, unless you happen to be Irish producer/composer and inveterate musical hipster David Holmes. Then, you'll somehow manage to stitch together all these disparate musical stylists with your own ultracool compositions, and produce the year's hippest soundtrack: Ocean's Eleven.
As cool as Steven Soderbergh's heist caper was on the big screen, Holmes' soundtrack may actually be cooler. Where Ocean's Eleven was souffle-light, the soundtrack has the gritty depth common to all of Holmes' best work, fusing jazz, funk, soul, and hip-hop elements into a sleek vibe that makes you feel richer, tougher, and better-looking just listening to it. Think Medeski, Martin & Wood at their sinewy grooviest and you have an idea of the sort of territory Holmes is mining. And the way it complements the film's dialogue, which is excerpted heavily on disc, makes you realize just how much the music helped propel along George and Brad's often paper-thin antics.
Just consider a track like "The Plans", which slinks along under the scene in which Clooney first tells Pitt about his plan to rob the vault at the Bellagio. The dialogue, as snappy as it is, could easily be utter nonsense -- "Off the top of my head, I'd say you're looking at a Boeskey, a Jim Brown, a Miss Daisy, two Jethros and a Leon Spinks." But Clooney and Pitt's cocksure delivery pulls it off, with a big boost from the moody, atmospheric cocktail jazz laid down by Holmes' outstanding core group of musicians: drummer Zach Danziger, guitarist Chris Dawkins, keyboardists Jim Watson, Scott Kinsey, and Stephen Hilton, and especially Bob Hurst, who sinks his teeth into Holmes' meaty basslines with exactly the right tone of swaggering grace. As an album, Ocean's Eleven belongs almost as much to Hurst as it does to Holmes -- check out his amazing work on cuts like "Lyman Zerga" and "Pickpockets" to see what I mean.
As good as Holmes' original material is, however, what's most impressive about the Ocean's Eleven soundtrack is the way in which Holmes uses it to weave together the hodge-podge of cool sounds he's culled from other artists. Leading listeners from the proto-Muzak of Percy Faith's "Theme for Young Lovers" to the funk-laden hip-hop of Handsome Boy Model School's "The Projects (P Jays)" to Perry Como's over-the-top "Papa Loves Mambo" as seemlessly as Holmes does is a testament both to the strength of the his own tracks, which serves as transitions, and to his skills as a DJ, choosing tunes that you wouldn't ever think go together until Holmes exposes their similarities.
And just what are those similarities, exactly? If I knew for sure, I could quit my day job and start making soundtracks, too -- but I think the common thread in all of Holmes' material, original and borrowed, is a dual sense of funky groove and cocktail-lounge cool. It's a potent combination, perhaps best displayed in an overlooked Elvis Presley track called "A Little Less Conversation", which Holmes has said served as the inspiration for the rest of the soundtrack (and indeed, Holmes' own "$160 Million Chinese Man" lifts its groove straight from the Elvis original). This amazing tune packs more soul, rock, and hip-shaking swagger into a mere one minute and forty seconds than some rockers have mustered in their entire careers. It could have been recorded yesterday. And since Holmes "rediscovered" it for Ocean's Eleven, it's getting more exposure than some songs that were -- it's even turned up on a Nike commercial. Thank yuh, Mr. Holmes -- thank yuh vurry much.
Other highlights in Holmes' stylish stew include Quincy Jones' deliciously vampy take on the big band classic "Blues in the Night", Arthur Lyman's swinging bachelor-pad version of Duke Ellington's "Caravan", and two old David Holmes originals that sound right at home in this groove-laden company -- "Gritty Shaker", a zippy breakbeat joint from his 1997 disc Let's Get Killed, and the triumphantly bouncy "69 Police", one of the best cuts off Holmes' most recent full-length album, 2000's stunning Bow Down to the Exit Sign. If the album has a weak spot, it's the same as the film's -- the tacked-on denouement of Debussy's "Clair de Lune", a beautiful piece of music that just doesn't quite fit with the rest (though Holmes cleverly samples it elsewhere to create a gorgeous theme song for Julia Roberts' character, "Tess").
Be warned: much of the Ocean's Eleven soundtrack, especially the tracks Holmes composed for the film, is overlaid with dialogue from the movie, a device that can be cute but distracting. At first, to be honest, it bugged the shit out of me, but after a few listens, Ted Griffin's clever dialogue began to blend into Holmes' music until the two sounded right at home together -- especially when Griffin's dialogue is delivered by Clooney, who may have the most seductive male voice in show biz. When the combination really works, as it does on the slow-burn track "The Plan", the effect is not unlike hearing good beat poetry spoken atop a smoking jazz combo. Still, it would be nice to hear Holmes do an entire album of his own in the super-groovy style he's perfected on Ocean's Eleven. Then the rest of us could practice delivering our own suave, witty banter on top of it, and pretend that we were at least half as cool as George and Brad.
— 26 April 2002
