By Travis Johnson
As anticipation ramps up for Danny Boyle’s upcoming return to the mean and heroin-ravaged streets of Leith, it’s seemed that T2 Trainspotting might be a rare example of nostalgia done right; not an excuse to wallow in the memories of the Cool Britannia ’90s but a tool to examine how time and distance affect ourselves and our relationships. Basically, whatever the junk equivalent of Starkiller Base is, this movie seems to lack it.
However, Trainspotting was not just a movie but a legitimate cross-media phenomenon and a lot that was down to the phenomenal soundtrack, which sprawled across two albums and ranged from Underworld’s hypnotic floor-filler ‘Born Slippy’ to Lou Reed’s ambiguous and melancholy ‘Perfect Day’ to, of course, Iggy Pop’s pumping ‘Lust for Life’. Any follow-up film was going to have to put in the hard yards on their soundscape and, let’s face it, if T2 was going to succumb to the siren call of past glories, it’d probably be here.
Well, wonder no more! Apparently the track list has dropped via Amazon. Check it out:
1. ‘Lust For Life’ – Iggy Pop (The Prodigy Remix)
2. ‘Shotgun Mouthwash’ – High Contrast
3. ‘Silk’ – Wolf Alice
4. ‘Get Up’ – Young Fathers
5. ‘Relax’ – Frankie Goes To Hollywood
6. ‘Eventually But (Spud’s letter to Gail)’ – Underworld, Ewen Bremner
7. ‘Only God Knows’ – Young Fathers
8. ‘Dad’s Best Friend’ – The Rubberbandits
9. ‘Dreaming’ – Blondie
10. ‘Radio Ga Ga’ – Queen
11. ‘It’s Like That’ – RUN-DMC, Jason Nevins
12. ‘(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais’ – The Clash
13. ‘Rain Or Shine’ – Young Fathers
14. ‘Whitest Boy On The Beach’ – Fat White Family
15. ‘Slow Slippy’ – Underworld’
That’s a interesting mix of the old and the new (and the old and the old – Prodigy ain’t young no more). ‘Lust for Life’ was always gonna be in there, and a bit of Underworld as well. Some newer stuff from Young Fathers and Wolf Alice is welcome, but some of the older stuff gives at least slight pause – it’ll be interesting to see where Radio Ga Ga fits, for example, and The Clash seems like perhaps too obvious a choice but hey, you gotta love The Clash.
T2 Trainspotting hits the cinema on February 23, 2017.
