Jonny Greenwood's Inherent Vice soundtrack is out, with Radiohead's “Spooks”

Jonny Greenwood's soundtrack for Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice is out on Nonesuch, three days after the film opened in a few cinemas in New York and Los Angeles. It is the third Anderson film he has scored, after There Will Be Blood and The Master. Track five is “Spooks”, a Radiohead song that had never been released before, still credited to all five of them as writers.

Radiohead played “Spooks” at 18 shows in 2006, from Copenhagen on 6 May to Amsterdam on 28 August, while they were working up the In Rainbows songs. On that tour it was a fast surf-guitar instrumental, over almost as soon as it began. Forrest Wickman, writing for Slate, says the new version is slowed into a psychedelic dirge, nearer the Doors' “The End” than to Dick Dale.

Greenwood plays it with Gaz Coombes and Danny Goffey, formerly of Supergrass. Joanna Newsom, who narrates the film, speaks lines from it over the track. Greenwood had said in October, once the song turned up in the credits at the film's New York Film Festival screening, that he had rewritten it for Supergrass members to play.

The album has 17 tracks, on CD and as a download now, with vinyl on 3 March. Ten carry Greenwood's name: nine pieces of his score, recorded with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and “Spooks”. The other seven are older records by Can, Neil Young, Minnie Riperton and others. Newsom's voice turns up a few more times across the album. According to Stereogum, Colin Greenwood plays on one of the score pieces, “Under the Paving-Stones, the Beach!”.

Tracklist

“Spooks” from the Inherent Vice soundtrack, Jonny Greenwood with Gaz Coombes, Danny Goffey and Joanna Newsom· Nonesuch Recordswatch on youtube →