Michael Penn

Although Michael Penn has some film scores on his résumé (Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, The Anniversary Party, American Teen, The Last Kiss), he remains better known as a folk/rock/pop singer/songwriter, and it's easy to see why on the basis of his music for Sunshine Cleaning, a quirky drama/comedy about two sisters who start a business cleaning up crime scenes. Penn has employed a small string section and the occasional horn to flesh out his cues, but the basic instrumentation is well within the folk/pop/rock mode, and the tracks for the most part simply sound like demos for his next singer/songwriter record, albeit ones he hasn't yet finished with fully fledged song structures, melodies, and lyrics. An uncredited voice that no doubt is the composer can even be heard wordlessly humming and singing "na-na-na" and "doot-doot-doot" here and there as apparent preparation for the words and tunes to come. It is disconcerting, then, that this music is interspersed with actual pop/rock songs performed by others, including Golden Smog and Electrelane, since they seem to be the completed performances that Penn's tracks are on their way to becoming. Presumably, this works to the satisfaction of the director to accompany her film, but to a mere listener to the soundtrack album, the music for Sunshine Cleaning comes off as incomplete. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide