Pitchfork
75
“Nostalgia: that’s why you’re here. You’re a tourist in your own youth.” When Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller) sneers this midway through T2 Trainspotting—his bleached-blond tufts thinner since we last saw him, his pretty brooding more intractably carved at the temples—he’s lashing out at his estranged mate Renton (Ewan McGregor) and the two grim decades that have passed since they parted. He’s gazing ruefully across the same desolate, outer-Edinburgh moors that mirrored their youths in the original Trainspotting, where they bemoaned their lots as needle-pocked nihilists, subpar grifters, and residents of Scotland (not necessarily in that order). But really, he’s breaking the fourth wall, all but short of winking into the camera and waggling a cigar, Groucho Marx-style—because T2 knows exactly why its audience has returned, and what we want from it.
Happily, the film delivers: T2 rings true to the spirit of the original—the grubby lad humor, the graphic wastrel extracurriculars, the creeping desperation of consciously inert lives—with an unhurried fondness that still raises stakes for its heroes. (It’s also not shy about embracing Trainspotting’s most zeitgeist moments, slotting in copious footage from the original.) T2 is a best-case scenario for nostalgia, bowing to the diehards while squaring up to present—and its soundtrack fares similarly, offering a loose-limbed mash of callback remixes and fervent young upstarts that echoes the glee of the original without laboring to eclipse it.
The 1996 Trainspotting soundtrack has been rightly celebrated for merging the Britpop bests of the era (Pulp, Elastica, Blur) with big-beat rave (Leftfield, Underworld). Championing dance music, especially in the power-ballad techno of Underworld’s “Born Slippy,” introduced it to new audiences while it was edging up from the underground stateside. Proto-punk was the other bloodline, Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life” the de facto theme, all joyous and seductive id; the wistful, near-sarcastic flow of Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day,” under Renton’s overdose scene, leant pathos.
T2’s mix stokes these moments as merrily as Renton, Sick Boy, and Spud (poor, hapless Spud) slide back into degeneracy. Underworld debuts “Slow Slippy,” a canter update to “Born Slippy”’s sprint; splintered mutters replace the prior’s yelps for “lager lager lager lager,” but when those same gentle, sunrise synths nudge to the fore, they are a pensive homecoming. “Lust for Life” gets a gnarled remix from the Prodigy, slicing a peppy group yelp between Pop’s brays, though the scuzzy synth thrum tapers off into a curious shrug of a conclusion. Underworld’s Rick Smith, T2’s composer and soundtrack curator, also offers “Eventually But (Spud’s Letter to Gail),” a lovely, glacial runoff of an ambient ballad that folds in somber film dialogue; Blondie gets a return of sorts in “Dreaming,” after their “Atomic” was covered by Sleeper in the original. (“Perfect Day” earns a piano reprise in the film that’s not included here.)
T2’s soundtrack doesn’t just smack of the past, though; it gets a timely revamp alongside that seminal “choose life” speech. Edinburgh’s Young Fathers appear three times, magnetic in their scrappy ardor; despite winning the 2014 Mercury Prize for their debut, Dead, the Scottish-Liberian-Nigerian trio remain undersung for their high-velocity, socially astute experimental hip-hop. Director Danny Boyle has called their new track here, “Only God Knows,” the “Born Slippy”-style “heartbeat” of T2; it shares that adrenaline, their own rough-and-tumble abandon (“Only God knows that the people are cheating/Only God knows you don’t need him”) merging smoothly with a gospel choir.
In fact, hip-hop—absent from Trainspotting—scores the best scene in T2. As Renton accidentally reunites with the homicidal Begbie in a club bathroom (one of T2’s many winking callbacks to toilets), Jason Nevins’ rattling remix of Run-D.M.C.’s “It’s Like That” thumps with palpable humidity, unyielding in four-to-the-floor rigor. (The 1997 track, a UK hit at the time, feels singularly like a return to roots for Boyle; his last film soundtracks have been tempered affairs, anchored by Bob Dylan and the Maccabees, Moby and Unkle, and Bill Withers and A.R. Rahman.) Elsewhere, the Welsh drum’n’bass DJ High Contrast whips up a fatalistic film opener in “Shotgun Mouthwash;” the acidic staccato mimics the drums of “Lust for Life” and abets a series of fitting poor-bastard asides. (The bleakest: “Last night I dreamt I went to Woodstock but I only saw Sha-Na-Na.”) The dusky London shoegazers Wolf Alice, the British surf-rockers Fat White Family, and the bawdy Irish comedy duo the Rubberbandits round out the new class ably.
The success of T2’s soundtrack, and the film itself, lies in its sense of contentment; it doesn’t lobby to be seminal again. It’s as exuberant as its predecessor, with some honest grit flaking against the more mannered sentimentality; it keeps a popular hearth warm and has a kicking, striving spine. To paraphrase an old friend: T2’s still got a great fucking personality.
Tue Feb 07 06:00:00 GMT 2017