Thank goodness Lost found its way. After an occasionally painful-to-watch third season that filled us in on the backstory of the Others and the Dharma Initiative (not always the same entity, coincidentally), the decision was made by the show’s own producers and writers to shorten the three remaining seasons to something only slightly longer than a UK television season, setting a finite end point in the process. And yet somehow, with that limitation set, the show’s storytelling has become anything but finite, as it messes around with time and space with reckless abandon. The fourth season was an eye-opener that made good use of the renewed focus that was made necessary by the shorter season length; the fifth season then proceeded to be a jaw-dropper.
This CD of music from the fourth season of Lost also benefits from the show’s sharper focus, collecting the absolute cream of the musical crop from the fourth year. Many themes from prior seasons are rehashed and expanded upon, but for the most part, the fourth season’s soundtrack doesn’t feel like a musical flashback to something we’ve already heard. The early tracks seem to have a more intimate feel, a bit less epic, as the show’s core characters – ostensibly the only six survivors of the Oceanic 815 crash so far as the general public knows – work out their own internal dilemmas. Even these cues tend to take a right turn into melancholy or menace, as the fourth season’s early episodes developed a knack for revealing that the survivors’ apparently triumphant return wasn’t as it seemed.
There are moments of uncharacteristic-for-Lost whimsy (“Maternity Hell”), deceptive calm (“The Constant”), and flat-out mayhem (“Keamy Away From Him”). Many of the tracks clock in at a pleasing length – actually, a few of them at surprising lengths for television scoring. The disc is chock full – and yet never quite achieves the slightly top-heavy feeling that I got from the two-disc season 3 soundtrack (even though it was marvelous to have the complete score from Through The Looking Glass in that collection). This is a good specimen of a compilation soundtrack with just the right cues, and at just the right length.
- Giving Up The Ghost (2:40)
- Locke’ing Horns (1:51)
- Lost Away – Or Is It? (1:41)
- Backgammon Gambit (1:17)
- Time And Time Again (2:43)
- The Constant (3:52)
- Maternity Hell (2:31)
- Karma Jin-itiative (1:24)
- Ji Yeon (3:07)
- Michael’s Right To Remain Wrong (1:55)
- Bodies And Bungalows (1:25)
- Benundrum (3:24)
- Hostile Negotiations (2:19)
- Locke-About (6:04)
- There’s No Place Like Home (2:35)
- Nadia On Your Life (1:41)
- C4-titude (1:59)
- Of Mice And Ben (2:19)
- Keamy Away From Him (4:58)
- Timecrunch (2:06)
- Can’t Kill Keamy (1:48)
- Bobbing For Freighters (5:20)
- Locke Of The Island (7:07)
- Lying For The Island (4:52)
- Landing Party (3:22)
- Hoffs-Drawlar (3:58)
Released by: Varese Sarabande
Release date: 2009
Total running time: 78:18
