Following up his 2012 work on "The Avengers" and "Flight" Alan Silvestri returns by composing the score of "The Croods".  If you have followed my reviews in the past, you will know that I consider a movie's score to be very important to a movie.  It can make a so-so movie good, a good movie great; and the reverse is true.  A poor score can ruin the enjoyment of a movie.  Watch The Avengers again, and the scene where the team is in the ruins of New York City back to back getting ready for the next wave, and imagine that scene without the music….it just doesn't work.  Music can extend the emotion felt by characters on screen and bring the viewer into the movie as a participant, and not just a viewer.  Alan's work on The Croods is another one in the line of good work that he has done.  Available both digitally and on CD, here are the tracks:

1.	"Shine Your Way" (performed by Owl City and Yuna)	3:25
2.	"Prologue"	2:08
3.	"Smash and Grab"	4:09
4.	"Bear Owl Escape"	2:45
5.	"Eep and the Warthog"	3:52
6.	"Teaching Fire to Tiger Girl"	1:55
7.	"Exploring New Dangers"	3:33
8.	"Piranhakeets"	2:24
9.	"Fire and Corn"	2:06
10.	"Turkey Fish Follies"	4:17
11.	"Going Guys Way"	3:15
12.	"Story Time"	3:55
13.	"Family Maze"	3:21
14.	"Star Canopy"	2:07
15.	"Grug Flips His Lid"	1:44
16.	"Planet Collapse"	1:44
17.	"We'll Die If We Stay Here"	5:28
18.	"Cave Painting"	1:12
19.	"Big Idea"	2:34
20.	"Epilogue"	4:25
21.	"Cave Painting Theme"	2:52
22.	"The Crood's Family Theme"	5:54
23.	"Cantina Croods"	1:12

The opening track is the only vocal song on the soundtrack.  Written by Alan and Glen Ballard, with Kirk DeMicco and Chris Sanders as well; this song is very beautiful as sung by Owl City and Yuna.  It fits the movie's central theme perfectly, unlike some other songs that are shoehorned into a movie.  Some of the other stronger tracks on this soundtrack include "Smash and Grab" which is a marching band song that features the USC Marching Band.  "Fire and Corn" which goes through the action scene and ends on a theme note, a perfect song for a movie to help with the scene.  "Going Guys Way" uses the theme from "Shine Your Way" as a melody that plays out beautifully.  "Star Canopy" uses hymnal sounding voices mixed with the theme from "Shine Your Way" that while short, is mixed together in perfect harmony with the theme.  "Epilogue" is very well done finale track to close the movie with that combines most of the major themes used throughout the movie in a powerful way.  The last two tracks are also very powerful and subtle at the same time - "The Croods Family theme" and the "Cantina Croods" invokes a memory of classic cantina music with horns while playing the "Shine Your Way" theme.  In all this is a wonderful soundtrack by one of the current era's best movie score composers.

Purchased The Croods soundtrack from the iTunes Store today!

-- Roger Longenbach