Johnny Jewel - Home Vinyl LP 2016

Johnny Jewel's soundtrack to the Belgian film Home contains songs by Chromatics as well as instrumentals by Symmetry and Jewel solo. Two of the Chromatics tracks are shorter versions of songs from Kill for Love, but there's also a starry, Auto-Tune-laced ballad called "Magazine." The most surprising and exciting tracks on the album are the ones by Symmetry, a side project of Jewel and his Chromatics bandmate Nat Walker. "The Magician" and "Countdown" are both slo-mo Italo-thrillers, each thick with suspense. In between them is "Alligator," a left-field detour into trap that nevertheless makes complete sense. Jewel's instrumentals, which take up the entire second half of the album, are typically moody and low-key, with the slow, ominous heartbeat of "Remorse" providing more tension than the soft, snowy pieces that surround it. While some of these tracks seem to float by without much consequence at first, there are moments of quietly devastating beauty such as "Isolation."