You don’t need to watch Showtime’s hit Thriller Yellowjackets to enjoy the (mostly) ’90’s mixtape that serves as the soundtrack for Season 2… but it sure does help! For a casual music fan you get choice cuts from The Cranberries, Live, Veruca Salt, Garbage, 4 Non Blondes and Pulp to name a few but for fans of the show, those classic tracks as well as the unique covers and other sonic oddities (Lookin’ at you, Alanis!) scattered throughout season 2’s 9 episodes hit a little harder when dropped into the middle of nowhere with a pack of teens trying to survive and, later, in the present trying to navigate some truly complicated and, quite frankly, very effed up lives.
Nirvana’s “Something In The Way” is doing the rounds again, appearing quite often throughout 2022’s The Batman to enhance the somber tone of Gotham City and now it rears its’ flannel-covered head in the wilderness during an especially heavy scene. Elsewhere, Necking got some actual screen time in Ep5 of S2 as they ripped through the Punk Rawk fury of “Big Mouth” from their debut release Cut Your Teeth and who can forget Jeff’s (Warren Kole) kinda twisted air drum-a-long to Papa Roach’s “Last Resort” while thinking about what he and wife Shauna just did.
In addition, Yellowjackets boasts quite a few unique covers with Florence + The Machine’s wild deconstruction of No Doubt’s “Just A Girl” dropping early on (Especially as it was present in the teaser for the season) along with Nouvelle Vogue’s haunting rendition of “The Killing Moon” turning the Goth classic from Echo and the Bunnymen even more Goth. And yes, apparently that’s possible.
Speaking of covers, can’t get enough of the earworm of a theme song that is “No Return” by Craig Wedren and Anna Waronker??? Well, you’re in luck because this soundtrack compilation boasts not one, but TWO versions of the offsetting/unsettling lead track for the show as done by the one and only Alanis Morissette including the “Lottie’s Dream Sequence” take! You can enjoy even more parts of Wedren and Waronker’s gorgeous score work/arrangements (Check out more of that here) along with everyone’s favorite Hobbit (Elijah Wood, “Walter Tattersall” on Season 2) and John Cameron Mitchell as they take on the original “Sit Right Down” in a scene straight from the mind of Misty (Christina Ricci) that has to be seen to be believed.
The soundtrack for Yellowjackets Season Two is out on September 22nd through Universal Music Canada and Showtime with pre-orders up now in a variety of formats (Including some gorgeous vinyl versions) which you can find here along with all the spots to pre-save the album in advance as well!