Drive My Car Original Soundtrack

Listeners coming to the *Drive My Car* soundtrack because of the movie’s accolades may not be familiar with its composer, Eiko Ishibashi, but those attuned to the more refined corners of underground music probably are. Like her collaborator, Jim O’Rourke—who plays guitar here, and also served as mixer—Ishibashi makes music that can scan as avant-garde but rarely feels confrontational or experimental, touching on lounge-jazz (“Drive My Car”), drifting electro-acoustic pieces (“We’ll Live Through the Long, Long Days, and Through the Long Nights”), crystalline piano (“The Truth, No Matter What It Is, Isn’t That Frightening”), and sound collage (“Cassette”). The unifying thread is a sense of delicacy and lightness: nothing oversold, nothing overplayed. Some soundtracks drive their subjects; Ishibashi frames.

The Japanese experimental musician’s score for the lauded new film by Ryusuke Hamaguchi possesses a cool remove, mirroring the film’s glacial profundity with organic nuance and contemplative improvisation.