"Far over the Misty Mountains rise..."

I held off on listening to anything from Howard Shore's score for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey until my grubby lil' paws had hold of the soundtrack CD when it was released on Tuesday. I went for the collector's edition, which has extra tracks, lots of nifty pictures and a bunch of liner notes about Shore's return to the music of Middle-Earth.

So all the cool kids knew about this song already (it was released on the Intertubes a few weeks ago) but the track I've playing like crazy over and over again from this score is "Song of the Lonely Mountain", performed by Neil Finn.

This is what'll presumably be playing when the end credits roll on the first part of Peter Jackson's The Hobbit trilogy.

"Beautiful" doesn't begin to do it justice. Now I loved the songs that played over the credits of each of The Lord of the Rings films (I've remarked a few times over the years - maybe a bit seriously - that the perfect song to have played at my eventual funeral should be "Into the West" by Annie Lennox from The Return of the King). But "Song of the Lonely Mountain" more than any other that has been produced for Jackson's Tolkien-ish movies... this seems even more appropriate in tone for the story at hand. It's exactly what I imagined Bilbo was feeling, when I first read The Hobbit many years ago, when he listened to the dwarves singing about heading off to reclaim their rightful kingdom from terrible Smaug.  Hearing their words, finding one's self listing off to far away mountains and forests and treasures... and adventure.

No wonder Bilbo went running off into the wild.  Heck, after listening to a song like this, I would too!  If there were any more wild to run off into... sigh.

And the rest of the soundtrack is awesome too! "Blunt the Knives" is the sort of song that I would sing if I were drunk.  Which I'm not a drinking man anyway. But If I were I would sing "Blunt the Knives". Anyhoo...

So looking forward to seeing this movie!! That won't come until Saturday. In the meantime, this album is gonna be spinnin' away like mad on my stereo!