Abbotts

A romantic coming-of-age drama set in the 1950s, Inventing the Abbotts was an early film for its now-famous cast, Liv Tyler, Jennifer Connely, Joaquin Phoenix and Billy Crudup. It got reasonable reviews but did little business at the box office and, a decade and a half later, is largely forgotten. The score came from the great Michael Kamen, seemingly making a real effort to avoid action films at that point of his career having made his name on them earlier on. The album opens with “On Springfield Mountain”, a beautiful new arrangement of the folk song (one of the earliest American folk songs) with largely new lyrics and an arrangement by Kamen which features all the trademark panache he brought to so many film songs over the years; Tara MacLean’s vocal performance is beautiful.