5 out of 5

Label: Jellybean Recordings

Produced by: Mike Ruekberg

Confession: some years ago, I was a borderline crazy Milla Jovovich fan.  Of the “we’d be friends if she knew me,” / wrote her *cough* multiple *cough* fan letters crazy variety.  Like most deluded people, there was a side of me that knew it was fantasy, but also that weird side that latches on to something (I think it’s called loneliness?) to keep the fire burning.

And burn it did, causing me to pick up Milla’s one official studio album, The Divine Comedy, as well as watch many of her films and buy those soundtracks if she appeared on them.  The film ‘Dummy’ did, unfortunately, much to further my obsession, as it presented a punky / wigged out version of the actress that maybe kinda played toward a kind of punky / wigged out personality type I fall for.  The character’s energy carries through to the two amped up klezmer variations of traditional (?) Yiddish (?) songs that, in movie, are played at a wedding, and on recording, are backed up by the able Botanica Bulgar Ensemble.

Yes, reality (as far as I’m aware of it) eventually kicked my fantasies in the pooper.  Milla is free to live her life with one less superfan to worry about.  Better judgment allowed me to see that many of her off-brand films – whether or not her performance was engaging – weren’t great (Dummy was charming at parts but really undercut itself), and The Divine Comedy was a Tori Amos-y bag that’s not my style.  It done got sold.

But: I kept the soundtrack to Dummy, mainly for these two tracks.  Which are ridiculously great.  The production is crisp and clear, and the backup band nails the klezmer like a band that isn’t a backup band.  Milla’s vocals are enjoyably nervy, especially making the sped-up-and-sped-up pace of Mezinka a blast.

I had a friend, once, who was a fan of a band who sang a couple of their (English) songs in Japanese, and she had all of those Japanese lyrics memorized.  Y’know, despite being a non-Japanese speaker.  It sort of baffled me at the time, but it is, indeed, the power of music: I may not know what the words to either of these tracks mean, but they’ve inspired so many re-listens that I can sing along without pause.

And if the biographers should one day uncover my Milla letters and, eh, tape recording, let the quote that runs with the smear piece that ruins my public image read: “It was all worth it to discover the Dummy soundtrack.”

p.s. I’m not really committing to that quote, so please reach out to me at that point so I can say something with more puns in it.