A few days ago I wrote about the True Blood soundtrack, but failed to mention the great theme song, "Bad Things" by Jace Everett, a Hoosier by birth and Texan by nature (he moved there with his family at the age of six and describes himself as a "born-again Texan.") He's not foolin'. You can hear a lot of the Lone Star state in his work; Everett has a big, cavernous voice and lists encouraging influences like Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and gospel music. His music is a little rowdier and earthier than these though, as well as the artist to which he is probably most often compared--Chris Isaak. Everett manages to be kinda swaggery and sincere at the same time, so he's a perfect fit for our favorite seriocomedy about the bloodsucking bedfellows of Bon Temps.
When you came in, the air went out.
And every shadow filled up with doubt.
I don't know who you think you are,
But before the night is through,
I wanna do bad things with you.
"Bad Things" by Jace Everett is available on iTunes and Amazon, and I just found this excellent guide to True Blood contains every known piece of music used in the series.
The editing on the opening credits is, of course, brilliant. I'm sure many others have gone on and on about that, so I won't, except to say that it contains all the sinning of a Saturday in Louisiana, and all the saving of a Sunday morning too. These credits are also a testament to how powerful visual sequences can be when they're edited specifically to fit the music, something I wish happened a lot more than it does.
What I will go on and on about is True Blood's soundtrack most interesting soundtrack quirk: the vampires' taste for far-flung world music, which gives Alan Ball's team license to create all sorts of deliciously unpredictable moments, like the perfect affinity they found between the saturated sound of Tuvan throat singing and a hot summer night in Louisiana. It makes sense that the longer you were around, the more rarefied your tastes would become, so I think this is a detail about the vampires' nature that rings true. In tonight's episode, "The Fourth Man in the Fire, " Bill Compton walks into his bathroom to find the vampire Eric Northman in his bathtub listening to some incredibly strange Swedish folk music...a reminder of home, he explains.
On another TB topic, how excited are we that the wonderful Stephen Root has joined the show? He wants to do bad things with Lafayette.
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