Beck and Devendra Banhart have recorded a song together for the new Todd Solondz’s movie ‘Life during Wartime’, which according to a few reviews is a funny and depressing film about a dysfunctional family whose members struggle to find love, meaning and especially forgiveness in a war-torn world. The film won a screening award at the 2009 Venice Film Festival bow, but doesn’t have U.S. distribution.
The song is performed by Devendra Banhart and produced by Beck who also does the background vocals, but the music was written by Marc Shaiman, who works for cinema and TV, and the lyrics by Todd Solondz.
I must say there is not much to eat in this song for hungry Beck or Banhart’s fans, you will definitively recognize Devendra’s voice but not Beck’s, and the whole thing will leave you with a half empty stomach, to say the least.
It’s a gentle ballad for acoustic guitar whose melody is rapidly forgettable. There’s nothing bad about the song, and the beginning seemed promising, but it never goes very far from this soft and quiet guitar tune.
For a few seconds I got excited when I saw these two names associated on a new project, but it’s kind of a dull one.
The Talking Heads already had a famous song ‘Life during Wartime’, I guess it was not fitting for the mood of the movie.
You can hear the Beck-Banhart song here: