Tenant

In 2015, Death and Vanilla reimagined the score for the 1976 Roman Polanski film The Tenant for a live screening at the Cinemascore festival in Spain. The core trio of the band, Marleen Nilsson, Anders Hansson, and Magnus Bodin, laid down mysterious and spooky sounds on a small variety of vintage keyboards; added bass, bells, and drums when needed; and created music that stands on its own apart from the film. The mood the music creates as it oscillates and rumbles is one of unbroken gloom and suspense delivered with graceful simplicity. The musicians never play more than they need to, laying back in order to create a unified front and sounding like the house band at a David Lynch cocktail party on "Zy and Choule," or the hold music at the Roadhouse on "Walls Have Teeth." Only around the record's midway point, when the drums kick in on "Mouvement Panique" and bust the seams open like Art Blakey on a bender, does the mood shatter just a bit. It snaps right back into place right after that and the music continues to lurk menacingly ("Dioz Delirium"), hide in the shadows ("Everything Is Always Happening"), and finally split apart ("The Bouncing Head") in shards of fuzztone-driven guitar. While it totally lacks the peaceful warmth that Death and Vanilla's non-soundtrack albums transmit, the group proves so expert at making such utterly haunted music that these elements aren't missed at all. The band could easily have a dual career crafting spooky, ghost-filled albums like this for, say, Ghost Box, while still making great pop albums for Fire too. ~ Tim Sendra