Composer: Clint Mansell.

Audio Mixer: Geoff Foster.

Recording information: Air Studios, London, England (07/2007).

With DEFINITELY, MAYBE, Clint Mansell takes a different approach to scoring, utilizing a band--guitar, drums, bass, piano, and various percussive devices--rather than a full orchestra. The result is close to smooth jazz-rock, and sounds much-influenced by Henry Mancini. Mansell doesn't emphasize atmosphere here as much as he enunciates the mood of the characters, focusing not on setting and scenery but on the people who dwell in them. Indeed, Mansell tackles this score as if he is personally involved in the film's situations--as if he were a prime character himself.

This album containing Clint Mansell's score for the romantic comedy Definitely, Maybe, appearing simultaneously with the DVD release of the film, is not to be confused with the "music from" soundtrack album of pop songs by various artists released shortly after the picture's theatrical opening. But Mansell, a former member of Pop Will Eat Itself, has written a batch of pop/rock ballad material in the name of a background score. In his titles for the cues, referencing the names of the women the main character is describing to his daughter in this "how I met and married your mom" tale, Mansell echoes Simon & Garfunkel with "For Emily (Whoever She May Be...)" (similar to their "For Emily Wherever I May Find Her") and even just copies a title outright with "April (Come She Will)." Whatever the track titles, he is fond of piano and guitar themes with string accompaniments, creating sweet, melodic numbers that often seem to lack only a lyric to turn them into pop songs. There are occasional exotic elements -- a trip-hop rhythm here, an Indian flavor there -- but for the most part this is music intended to provide light accompaniment to an equally light entertainment. ~ William Ruhlmann