Liked: the music
Composer Joe Wong and music supervisor Brienne Rose are the architects of Russian Doll season two’s soundtrack. “Some of the music that we used in season one had this quality of, like, looping,” Rose explained to IndieWire. “Whereas some of the music in season two had this quality of [a] propulsive back-and-forth… based on the [subway] trains and that linear quality.” That goes for both the score and the pop-music songs chosen to accompany the action, likethe moment we encounter Nadia striding along to Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus.”
Some of it’s a bit on the nose—Danzig’s “Mother” after Nadia realizes she’s “become” Nora, for example—some of it’s on the nose but also perfect—Bauhaus’ “Bela Lugosi’s Dead,” reminding us that last season, Nadia died over and over but is still “undead, undead, undead”). And of course, Harry Nilsson’s “Gotta Get Up,” season one’s signature time-loop jam, claims a crucial moment in a warped new context.
