Editorial Reviews

The score for the CG-animated children's film Bolt was composed by veteran John Powell, who employed a familiar mixture of strings and synthesized percussion that was standard fare in Hollywood circa 2008. Powell's big themes are Aaron Copland-by-way-of-Randy Newman efforts, which is to say expansive melodies to evoke broad American landscapes, with perhaps a hint of humor. But Powell also mixes in other styles, for instance giving the cue called "New York" a Gershwinesque 1920s jazz flavor and "Meet Mittens" a Middle European klezmer music sound, while some of the multi-part "House on Wheels" sounds like it has been borrowed from a vintage Hollywood Western. The album begins with a pop/rock song, "I Thought I Lost You," which oddly sounds like a love duet between John Travolta, a man in his mid-fifties, and the teenage TV and pop star Miley Cyrus, until it is remembered that Travolta voices the movie's title character, a dog. Jenny Lewis' country-folk "Barking at the Moon" also evokes the picture's story line, with the somewhat tautological chorus, "There is no home like the one you've got, 'cause that home belongs to you." William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide

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