Danny Elfman

Big Mess

ANTI/EPITAPH Fêted soundtrack composer returns to his avant-punk roots.

Best known nowadays as an Oscarnominated score composer for film and TV, especially his multiple collaborations with director Tim Burton, Danny Elfman returns to his surrealist avant-rock roots on his first solo album in 37 years. The former Oingo Boingo frontman and unlikely new-wave pop star conceived Big Mess during covid lockdown with help from LA musician friends including drummer Josh Freese and guitarist Robin Fink, whose long list of shared credits include Devo, Guns N’ Roses and Nine Inch Nails.

Mixing industrial metal textures with orchestral strings, sharp pop hooks and sinister mood shifts, in places this sprawling double album feels like a vaudevillian glam-punk opera, mixing gnarly guitar blast with Sparks-style electrocabaret archness on gloriously profane confessionals like Kick Me, Sorry and Happy. Promoted with a series of strikingly arty horror-punk videos, Big Mess is dense and discordant and wilfully ugly at times, but also a richly original and impressively ambitious musical response to a nightmarish pandemic. ■■■■■■■■■■