This is the album that every Elfman fan must buy! It contains cues from many of his best works up until 1990. It shows Elfman's great diversity for writing weird as well as spooky and very dark sounding music. The two Pee Wee tracks are fairly wacky and so great fun to listen to. Pee Wee's love theme in particular is rather nice, not wacky, but smooth and beautifully flowing. The darker edge to Elfman is easily demonstrated in Batman, Darkman, Tales from the Crypt and Nightbreed. The Batman suite needs no recommendation, although instead of Up the Cathedral, I would have picked Waltz to the Death. However, since any Elfman fan worth his salt will have Batman anyway, this is a minor quibble. A mixing of darkness with wackiness is evident in Beetlejuice which is a particular favourite of mine on this CD. Midnight Run and Hot to Trot are more like pop music and both thoroughly entertaining. Elfman's panache for writing good TV themes is evident in The Simpsons and Tales from the Crypt, the former probably being one of the most widely recognised themes in the UK and USA (at least!) Although it's very silly, probably my single favourite track has got to be Study Montage from Back to School. It is just great fun, it races round the orchestra, backed by a repeating horn figure and piano. It's the sort of piece that you hear and just think that it's cool without knowing why, probably because it's just so much fun. I am still waiting to get Volume 2, but until then, this makes a great summary of Elfman's work up to 1990.
Rating ~ 