3 out of 5

Label: WaterTower Music

Produced by: Ramin Djawadi

As with Ramin Djawadi’s first season Westworld soundtrack / score, the structure and impact of the album are influenced by how the show itself landed. In season one, that amounted to a bit of over-seriousness that led to some detachment; however, the “visuals” – Ramin’s chosen audio parameters of mostly minimal pieces and a collision of moody electronic and organic, Western-tinged sounds – and strong musical themes gave the music staying power. In season two, the show’s perpetual headiness had its focus straying, somehow taking itself even more seriously as its plot expanded outward; musically, that equates to a pretty clear shift about partway through this 29 track collection, at which point we lose the musical plot, and the songs fall back on more generically cinematic structures, or somewhat cringey attempts at sounding dark and mean, This latter half, taken on its own terms, wouldn’t be a bad score to a lesser sci-fi movie; one in which you can’t really get a sense of the story vibes from the music, but the music itself is pretty good. However, when such tunes are paired with the much more involving and thematic music in the album’s first half, the stuff falls flat – it is, with some exceptions, kinda boring.

The overall setup of the album is what we did before: Ramin mixes originals with stripped down takes on covers mostly from the modern era, anachronistically paired with Westworld’s (in some contexts) old-timey settings. Even though I kinda hate most of the artists being covered – also true in season 1 – I can’t deny the power of their singles, nor of how good they sound when boiled down to their melodies and a single piano line with choice orchestration. And because the season picks up in a sort of heightened atmosphere, Ramin gets to playfully juxtapose calmness and intensity throughout the album’s first half, both in terms of mood and instrumentation – blending the analog elements with noisy electronics – making the non-cover compositions much more affecting this time around.

Things start to go a little off as the season’s story expands to another setting, giving Ramin the opportunity for Indian and Asian instrumentation; this still follows a strong pattern of juxtaposition, but the music’s ability to narrate becomes cluttered – it’s a bit more showy. A second cover of Nirvana’s Heart-Shaped Box signals the bigger decline on the set, as songs thereafter are mostly orchestral, and feel ignorant of themes presented elsewhere. They’re not totally gone, just brought back in fleeting and immemorable ways; when electronics are mixed back in (Virus, Core Drive), it feels very forced – trying so hard to make this sound gritty.

Retouching on the show’s opening music towards the end of the set is a reminder of how beautiful the show’s music can be; how skillful Ramin is at making subtle changes for great effect. But it’s also really the sole standout in the album’s back half.

To me, Westworld, as show, struggled to figure out its own identity – in a way that wasn’t necessarily intended as any meta commentary on the show itself. This is, unfortunately, represented in the music, especially as that struggle got arguably worse season by season. While Ramin’s music remains a very solid contribution, the second season’s score isn’t as overall memorable as that of the first.