Like most films by the Malloy brothers, 180? South is a wilderness flick that devotes ample time to surfing and island life. The soundtrack is similarly breezy, featuring stripped-down campfire folk songs that were specifically written for the movie. Mason Jennings and Jack Johnson serve as the requisite representatives of Brushfire Records, but the track list also reaches beyond the Brushfire family with two of its most active contributors: James Mercer, frontman of the Shins and Broken Bells, and Isaac Brock, captain of Modest Mouse. In addition to contributing their own solo songs, the two frontmen work together as part of Ugly Casanova, Brock's incognito solo project that functions here as a Brock/Mercer supergroup. With help from a rotating cast of backup musicians, Ugly Casanova contributes eight songs to this disc, all of them loose, rootsy, and seemingly recorded during casual, off-the-cuff studio sessions. Mercer's own songs are a bit more studied, and his cover of Neil Young's "Journey Through the Past" is one of the soundtrack's highlights. ~ Andrew Leahey
- Format: Vinyl
- Genre: Soundtracks & Film Scores
