Thomas Newman has written a very good score for this film starring Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins. Highly recommended and an excellent place to start if you're looking to build a Thomas Newman collection. It also benefits from a good structure which allows it too build momentum, rather than sag towards the end with its glorious final 10 minutes. I must admit that on first listening, Meet Joe Black did seem to be just a fraction long, but this is an album to persevere with. A few short selections of source music are included and while some might feel they detract from the atmosphere, I rather like the fact that they break up Newman's drama a little, but are never so long or intrusive as to spoil the general ambiance. However, That Next Place is a long, beautifully written finale which allows in some brass to broaden the orchestral colour and allow all the threads to reach a satisfying conclusion. The final few cues pick up a little more, Someone Else featuring some more forthright, yet heartfelt phrases. Another, Fifth Ave., actually reminds me of Sting's Englishman in New York, but arranged as a jazzy clarinet solo - fun and appropriate all the same. A couple of trademark witty Newman scherzos pop up, most notably in the jaunty Everywhere Freesia. To intersperse the strings, an occasional twinkling piano or plucked string counterpoint is added which gives the orchestral textures a little more definition. The main theme is introduced in the opening track, but it only appears subtlety through the score, never overwhelming the other ideas. In fact, listening to it carefully, the texture almost suggests the Randy Newman of Awakenings, with high harmonics playing above the more usual instrumental registers.
Newman's dominant orchestral voice here is strings not thick 'Hollywood' strings, but almost ethereal beauty that sounds like at any minute the sound could be shattered. Being something of a romance, the score was always going to be a little more traditional than some of his percussion and weird instrument efforts, but is no less skillfully written. Fortunately, Meet Joe Black falls into the latter category. This is an excellent score, an achievement from any composer, and something that ranks up near the top of Thomas Newman's work.Thomas Newman does frustrate me at times, but at other times, his music is some of the most classy and beautifully composed you'll find in Hollywood today.
But the score is also quite playful, as on "Peanut Butter Man," where a flute meanders over bouncing strings, and also in the quick, percussive staccato of the middle-eight. Newman skillfully weaves this theme into the rest of the score, and its sweeping sentimentality is flexible enough to be incorporated into other melodic themes, such as the denouement of "Someone Else." For the most part, gentle strings and woodwinds dominate, with gentle piano work reserved for special, heart-tugging moments. As romantic themes go, Newman's ranks as a recent classic that captures both the initial rush of love and also the devastating crush of its leaving. "Whisper of a Thrill," the soaring romantic theme, is a perfect distillation of the film's emotional plot, its yearning melody shadowing Joe Black's ( Brad Pitt) love for the beautiful Susan (played by Claire Forlani) and its ultimate futility.
His score for Meet Joe Black contains the seeds of beauty that would fully flower on his score for American Beauty, the next film he scored and a high point of his career. As modern soundtrack scores go, the quality can be hit or miss, but Thomas Newman's work is almost always something to get excited about, as evidenced in the Oscar-nominated The Shawshank Redemption, Road to Perdition, and the title theme for Six Feet Under.