“Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” has never felt so powerful.
Chris Pratt in Guardians of the Galaxy
Marvel Studios
With apologies to Zach Braff and his painstaking mix of new and familiar indie rock in Wish I Was Here, the best soundtracks of the summer have been proudly uncool. First there was Boyhood, a film that uses its musical choices as chronological signposts along its 12-year journey. The music that accompanies Mason's (Ellar Coltrane) growing up is acutely of its moment — stuff like Sheryl Crow's "Soak Up The Sun" and Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" and Gotye's "Somebody That I Used To Know." They're not meant to be the best songs or the most on point, but the aural wallpaper that was once inescapable, and that's instantly evocative of a particular stretch of time.
The music that carries Guardians of the Galaxy through its interplanetary adventure is even more joyously unhip. Marvel's latest movie has an AM Gold soundtrack that, on one level, is completely at odds with its sci-fi setting, and that on another, better level, is absolutely perfect. It's powered by a literal cassette mixtape — Awesome Mix Vol.1 — made for Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) when he was a Midwestern kid, by a dying mom who wanted him to hear her favorite songs. They're '60s and '70s radio fodder, classic and cheesy pop hits that have survived enough decades to accrue the heft of collective memory. When the title splashes across the screen, it's over a wide shot of Peter with his Sony Walkman headphones on, rocking his way through the craggy landscape of an abandoned planet to the sounds of Redbone's "Come And Get Your Love."
Marvel Studios
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