Rest Stop: Don't Look Back

Bear McCreary

 
" good enough for background listening "

Written by Thomas Glorieux - Review of the regular release

Rest Stop Dead Ahead was a straight to video release about a deranged killer who terrorized unknowing victims in the country sides of California. The sequel Rest Stop: Don't Look Back adds more of the same. The returning element comes from composer Bear McCreary. Besides his ever busy schedule on the Battlestar Galactica series, he maintains to have fun on any bizarre wicked production that comes his way. Rest Stop isn't any different. And he was ready to fuel the sequel with his own personal sound.

This album from La-La Land brings us the sequel score, songs from both the movies as well as McCreary's own personal best from the first.
If you don't know McCreary's sound by now, you missed everything around his Battlestar Galactica era. His banjo, his rocking attitude, his use of guitar or organ, it is always somewhere around in his music. And so in Rest Stop: Don't look Back.

The score opens with the guitar twangs in "Roadside Assistance", but takes a great turn in "Tom and Marilyn". This is a catchy and great electric guitar track that adds romance, coolness and laid back emotions on the backseat. Altogether, it is stuff that adds color to such a gritty story.

The hallelujah gospel singing under McCreary's score is equally inventive in "Cleansing the Sinner", the moody underscore with guitar as driving instrument is all the more expected in "Creepy Gas Station". The guitar twangs and solo violin surely adds some soothing material to "Marilyn's Blues" while soft strings are discovered in "Nicole's Ghost". The moody disturbing "On the Bus" is definitely up McCreary's ally.

Like most albums of McCreary, his sound is cool, fresh and easy to listen to. But most of it is pretty the same and most of it doesn't hang. "Tom and Marilyn" is the only cue that keeps spinning around in the head, only because you don't expect it.

And so, he could've let "Powertools" slip under the radar if it wasn't for the ending. Luckily the lovely love theme returns in "Tom to the Rescue". "The Last Stand" has a rocking guitar attitude you don't hear a lot in music anymore, in fact only from McCreary. It is fetchy and ends lovely when a flute and guitar show a part of the love theme. "The Driver gets Marilyn" doesn't deliver however a happy ending feeling.

As a bonus, La-La Land throws in a bunch of tracks from the first Rest Stop: Dead Ahead album. The ambient song "All that Remains" and his own laid back "Lonely Woman" are lovely. The on edge banjo in "Trapped", the rhythmic "Gravely Mistaken Identity" and the banjo resolution in "Nicole Fights Back" are effective and easily acceptable.

While this is not Battlestar Galactica, the musical style is surely good enough for background listening. His instrumental rock soundtracks don't bring music that will stay in the heads for long. But there's the stinging effect you receive from listening to them that makes them acceptable for a spin. Again, this isn't stuff I would buy. But at least it is a distinguishable sound from a composer that at least tries to bring some diversity to an otherwise gritty expectable slasher fare. The name's Rest Stop: Don't Look Back.

Rest Stop: Don't Look Back: *** / Songs: ***
Rest Stop: Dead Ahead: *** / Songs: ***12

Tracklisting

Rest Stop: Don't Look Back
1. Rattlesnake on the Highway: Brendan McCreary * (4.26)
2. Roadside Assistance (1.27)
3. Main Title (0.44)
4. Tom and Marilyn (4.09)
5. Cleansing the Sinner (1.53)
6. Jesus, He Forgives you Too: Buck Davis and his Minstrel Singers * (3.11)
7. Creepy Gas Station (3.46)
8. Marilyn's Blues (3.28)
9. On the Bus (2.31)
10. Nicole's Ghost (2.22)
11. Powertools (3.44)
12. Tom to the Rescue (2.12)
13. The Last Stand (5.06)
14. The Driver gets Marilyn (1.49)

Bonus Tracks
Rest Stop: Dead Ahead
15. All that Remains: Raya Yarbrough * (4.19)
16. Lonely Woman: Brendan McCreary * (3.48)
17. Trapped (4.26)
18. Gravely Mistaken Identity (3.07)
19. Nicole Fights Back (2.22)
20. Down Home Salvation: Buck Davis and his Minstrel Singers * (5.38)

* music and lyrics by Brendan McCreary

Total Length: 64.37
(click to rate this score)  
 
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(total of 3 votes - average 2.5/5)

Released by

La-La Land Records LLLCD 1079 (regular release 2008)

Orchestrations by

Jeremy Levy & Brandon Roberts