"Angel On My Shoulder" is the final song on the soundtrack for Jacob Aaron Estes' indie arthouse film, Mean Creek (2004): an unforgiving examination of bullying, peer pressure, lost innocence and violence that echoes William Golding's Lord of the Flies (1954). The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw notes that the film "shows how mercurial the emotional power politics of teenagerdom can be, as well as how scary and violent", and commends the film's sharp dialogue and menacing atmosphere. Without spoiling anything, I can agree with the Rotten Tomatoes consensus that Mean Creek "is an uncomfortably riveting glimpse into the casual cruelty of youth".
The movie was scored by long-standing music production company tomandandy (the brainchild of Andy Milburn and Thomas Hajdu, who met at Princeton University). Their cello-based tracks accentuate and explicate the difficult, thorny emotions that the film fleshes out: distrust, anxiety, pain, sorrow, shock, panic, betrayal, regret. "Angel On My Shoulder" ends the soundtrack with a poignant eulogy that mourns the (traumatic) death of childhood carefreeness and innocence that the film's protagonists have to endure.
LA-based jazz vocalist and songwriter Gretchen Lieberum (who is perhaps best known for being one-half of Prince cover band Princess with SNL's Maya Rudolph) lends her haunting, angelic vocals to the track to articulate an incredibly hard-won optimism for the future:
'Hey you believersAnd all you dreamersI've come to see this differentlyI've lost faith in numbersAnd changes in weatherAnd I'm feeling the tear in things
Heaven to believe inBeauty and meaningYou made me feel like more than meWhat comes in an instantIs gone in a momentAnd then nothing else can be
But I've always believed in the angel on my shoulderAnd the sweetness that comes with changes in weatherSo let's close the drapesAnd dance like we're strangers to time'Til our fountain runs dry'
Lyrics: Musixmatch.com
