Album Review: Spring Awakening

Spring Awakening

Music by Duncan Sheik

7.0

Released 2006

Rubric:

Musicianship: 7

Musical Cohesiveness: 9

Song Structure: 7

Lyrics: 6

Emotional Energy: 7

Emotional Landscape: 7

Album Structure: 8

Production: 8

Variety: 5

Lasting Impression: 6

It can be very tricky thing to review a musical soundtrack, since the quality of a musical is dependent on the performance that you see. For all intensive purposes, each time I review a musical I will attempt to exclusively review the SOUNDTRACK as if it were simply a very detailed concept album (ala Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” or Ayreon’s “Into the Electric Castle”), and not the musical as a whole as I saw it onstage. In the case of some Musical Reviews, I may not have seen a performance at all (for example, Next to Normal) but I will critique the soundtrack based on how good the music is, how good the story is (an important piece of creating a concept album) and how well the music conveys or compliments the story. Spring Awakening serves as a good example of show with a noticeable difference between the actual show and the soundtrack. As a performance, Spring Awakening is Lively, Raunchy, Inappropriate and Moving. As a soundtrack, Spring Awakening is Slow, Uninspiring and ultimately boring. That’s not to say there’s nothing to like about the music, it’s just that I came out of the listening experience feeling completely unfulfilled.

The highlights of Spring Awakening are actually very good, but the problem is they are very few and far between. The two best tracks are the most upbeat tracks on the album and incidentally the two tracks with expletives in the name, “The Bitch of Living” and “Totally Fucked.” In the scope of things “The Bitch of Living” comes in as an early attention getter, attempting to give energy and personality to the soundtrack and it’s characters, and it does a very good job of this, introducing a number of the characters and describing the trials and tribulations of being a 19th century teenager. It captures the energy and spirit of each individual character in a simple verse chorus verse structure in which each teenager takes a few lines to describe his situation and the cast joins together for the energy packed chorus, “It’s the bitch of living/bitch, just the bitch...” This song also showcases the show’s best lyrics, as the teenagers sing about frustration and masturbation clearly enough to make you laugh, but vaguely enough to make you think, “We’ll work that silver magic/then we’ll aim it at the wall” and “It’s the bitch of living/with nothing but your hand.” The other song, “Totally Fucked” is the perfect 11 o’clock number, as it packs in just the right amount of punch and excitement just as everything else in the show is getting darker and darker. The song is relatively simple, but it is undeniably catchy, and you will find yourself singing along every time you hear it, no matter how hard you might resist. If you are a big broadway fan, you really need these two songs in your collection. The third really good song on the album is “The Dark I Know Well,” a frightening and powerful look at the horror and the consequences of sexual abuse. A couple of other stand out moments are the melodies in “Mama Who Bore Me” and “Song of Purple Summer,” and Moritz’s two big numbers “...And Then There Were None” and “Don’t Do Sadness/Blue Wind” are solid tracks, but none of those tracks quite separate themselves enough from the pack to make up from mediocrity that is the rest of the soundtrack.

One of Spring Awakening’s weakest points is its lyrics. Throughout much of the show, the lyrics are too vague to really convey what needs to be shown in a musical. For example, in “Mama Who Bore Me,” Wendla sings “Mama the Weeping, Mama the Angels,” yet at no point in the rest of the album (or show for that matter) is there any mention of who is crying and why, and what role “the angels” play in the show, and to make matters worse, that song opens the show, and it seems to hint to something that has happened or something that will reappear later in the show, but there is clarification! I suppose you could make the argument that it is a type of foreshadowing, but since there is no other clear foreshadowing in the show, it seems either a weak argument or at least a poorly implemented convention. The lyrics also go downhill when the writer attempts to write “like a teenager,” and more often than not, these sections just end up sounding awkward and trite. In some cases, the lyrics are just flat out bad, such as “I go up to my room, turn the stereo on/shoot up some you and the you of some song.” First of all, I understand that Duncan Shiek is trying to Update the story to be more applicable to modern audiences, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that there were no stereos in the 19th century. Second, the last half of that line makes absolutely no sense, and it sounds absolutely atrocious when sung.

While the Lyrics are certainly aggravating, the reason that the Spring Awakening soundtrack doesn’t work is much more complicated. On the most basic level, it has to do with an Issue of variety. Almost every track occupies the same emotional and musical plane, and almost all of those songs are slow and boring. Spring Awakening attempts to use the songs as something of an “inner monologue” for the characters in order to give the audience a feeling for what’s happening in the character’s minds, but the lack of variety limits the emotions that are being conveyed and that the listener experiences. If I knew anything about teenagers (which I do) I would point out that teenagers are prone to a wide range of emotions that could only begin to be described by a diverse set of of music, ranging from soft calm songs to crazy angry fast songs, with everything in between showcased as well. Spring Awakening is a set of incredibly boring and unmemorable slow, introspective songs, with a very very sparse sprinkling of emotionally potent songs. It would be one thing if every slow song was actually good (see Coldplay, Stars) but most of the songs on Spring Awakening are simply bad. Most songs in themselves are repetitive and there are very few memorable hooks. Spring Awakening is also completely lacking in licks and riffs. If you listen to the best rock musicals and the best rock music, each song is almost always propelled by a memorable lick or riff. On Jesus Christ Superstar, classic songs such as “Heaven on Their Minds” and “Superstar” start out with exciting and mood setting instrumental lines. Many songs in Rent also have great riffs, as the creepy intro to the title song, and the super 80’s riff of “Out Tonight,” serve as perfect examples of how to weave a memorable riff into a song to make it stand out. Spring Awakening never does this, and as a result, there are almost no songs that leave any kind of lasting impression.

On the whole, Spring Awakening is a very weak soundtrack, and given the current asking price for soundtracks, you are probably best off saving your money, and just grabbing the best songs (Totally Fucked, The Bitch of Living and The Dark I Know Well) because honestly those songs are awesome, but the rest of the album simply isn’t worth it.