The Were-Rabbit Sounds Better Than Ever

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MUSIC REVIEWS
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit (Picture Disc)

Genre: Score
Year Released: 2026
Runtime: 48m 06s
Tracks: 19
Composer(s): Julian Nott
Additional Music: Rupert Gregson-Williams, James Dooley, Lorne Balfe, Alastair King
Where to Watch: available now; order your copy here: www.i.varesesarabande.com, www.craftrecordings.com, or www.amazon.com

RAVING REVIEW: The best scores will automatically remind you where the film came from, but WALLACE & GROMIT: THE CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT goes a step further. Julian Nott’s music is basically inseparable from Wallace and Gromit. The spirited melodies, exaggerated danger, little bursts of eccentricity, and surprisingly large horror cues all feel perfectly suited to characters who can move from breakfast to monster hunting without ever making the transition seem unnatural.

That’s in part why it's so surprising that the score took this long to receive a release like this. More than twenty years after the film arrived in theaters, Varèse Sarabande puts the score out on a limited-edition picture disc. It’s an obvious collector’s item, but revisiting the album also makes a good argument that Nott’s work deserves attention beyond the novelty of seeing Wallace and Gromit spinning around on a turntable.

Nott’s connection to the characters goes all the way back to A GRAND DAY OUT, and that really matters to the series. The familiar WALLACE & GROMIT theme doesn’t exist simply because audiences expect it; it serves as the musical foundation for a much larger score. THE CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT allowed Nott to take something created for a much smaller adventure and expand it into something capable of supporting a feature-length monster movie.

That expansion is apparent in “Anti-Pesto to the Rescue.” The playful personality is still there, but everything has been given more room to breathe. Nott can move between adventure themes and outright silliness without either side feeling out of place. One moment sounds ready for some act of bravery, while the next reminds us that the heroes are an eccentric inventor and his dog trying to keep rabbits away from vegetables. THE CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT is built around an affectionate parody of classic monster movies, and Nott treats that side of the story with much more commitment than might be expected. Choir, organ, and the larger orchestral passages give the threat genuine emotion rather than turning every moment into a joke. “Transformation” is probably the best example. At just over four minutes, it’s one of the longest pieces on the record and gives the darker side of the score time to emerge. The music becomes dramatically bigger and more ominous, yet it never sounds like it belongs anywhere else but here. That ability to make horror and comedy feel so natural together in the same musical space is one of the album’s best features.

The same is true of “Ravaged in the Night,” which squeezes quite a bit of menace into less than two minutes. Nott rarely has the luxury of spending five or six minutes developing a single idea because so much of the film moves from one idea to the next. Instead, many of these tracks get in, establish a mood, move the story forward, and disappear. On vinyl, that creates an album that rarely sits still.

The first side, in particular, has an almost restless quality. “Bless You, Anti-Pesto,” “Lady Tottington & Victor,” “Fire Up the Bun-Vac,” and “Brainwash & Go” move through different pieces of the film in quick succession. Heard away from the screen, they reveal how much info Nott packed into scenes that may have originally been remembered more for the on-screen jokes. “Lady Tottington & Victor” also shows how the score can shift into something more refined before immediately returning to the stranger stuff. WALLACE & GROMIT has always depended on contrast. Everything can look cozy and proper right up until one of Wallace’s machines starts malfunctioning, and the music understands that unpredictability.

The second side is where the album really opens up. “Fluffy Lover Boy,” “Kiss My Arrrtichoke,” and “Dogfight” are among the longest tracks on the release, giving the music more space to develop during the film’s increasingly chaotic final stretch. These cues have much more momentum than some of the short pieces on Side A, making the back half of the record particularly enjoyable as a standalone listen.

“Kiss My Arrrtichoke” may also have one of the best track titles on any album, although the joke would mean very little if the music didn’t deliver. “Dogfight” follows with another strong action cue before the record begins winding back toward the characters themselves. That leads into “Every Dog Has His Day,” “All Things Fluffy,” and finally “Wallace & Gromit.” Ending with the theme is exactly the right decision. After nearly fifty minutes of expanding this world into something larger, the record eventually circles back to the simple melody that started it all.

This format is perfect for this release; the gorgeous artwork is near perfection, and the album itself can be a display piece while holding the incredible score hidden within the grooves. WALLACE & GROMIT has such a distinct visual identity that a plain record would almost feel like a missed opportunity for its vinyl debut. A picture disc turns the score into something designed specifically for fans of the characters, rather than simply another catalog score transferred onto wax.

Varèse Sarabande presents the soundtrack in a way that suits the music and the characters well. The 19 tracks span two sides and run just over 48 minutes, making it an easy album to enjoy from beginning to end without breaking up the flow. The experience pulls you right back into the movie, just like the best scores should. At $33, the picture-disc presentation also gives WALLACE & GROMIT collectors something distinctive to go along with the score. Any fan of this duo needs this in their collection.

It’s also nice to see this score getting attention rather than another release of something that has already appeared on vinyl several times. THE CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT won the Annie Award for its music, yet the score has largely remained tied to its original era while WALLACE & GROMIT continued finding new audiences. A vinyl debut in 2026 feels overdue; I was thrilled to see this.

The timing works especially well because the score still sounds remarkably lively. Nothing about these compositions feels trapped in 2005, partly because Nott drew on orchestral work and classic horror rather than whatever trend was popular when the movie was released. The result has aged about as gracefully as Aardman’s stop-motion animation, which is basically timeless.

The collectible presentation may get this version onto a shelf, but the music is what makes it worth putting on the turntable. Nott created a score that can be funny without becoming throwaway comedy music and dramatic without taking itself too seriously.

WALLACE & GROMIT: THE CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT finally arriving on vinyl feels less like a piece of nostalgia and more like overdue recognition for one of the strongest parts of the film. The picture disc makes it an easy display piece for Aardman collectors, while the 19-track program offers enough personality to stand on its own once the movie is nowhere in sight. After two decades, this score still has plenty of bite.

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[photo courtesy of VARÈSE SARABANDE, CRAFT RECORDINGS]

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