Music to My Ears continues its regular Tuesday deal with a look at my favorite track from the recently released Pokemon X and Y. To be fair, a certain French professor’s theme and the power plant music are close, but…some other time.

This post has a mild spoiler in it, which I usually like to avoid. But let’s be honest: It’s not exactly too hard to see this coming, is it? Lysandre shows up with firey red hair and a somewhat different worldview. Where oh where have we seen that before in the Pokemon series? Could he actually be a big baddie, perhaps?

I wasn’t too sold on the Team Flare song, especially compared to earlier Teams in the series. Team Galactic and Team Plasma both have battle themes that I could listen to for hours on loop — they’re probably in my top 50 video game tracks of all-time. (That sounds like a list I need to do sometime. Hmm.)

But once we got to the two fights against Lysandre, that’s when I was hooked. This darker, grungier theme mixes in a more harsh beat with the familiar Team Flare notes…but after a few measures, everything takes a turn. That’s when we get a song that sounds like it could be played outside my house on Halloween to scare off trick-or-treaters, and the whole thing clicks. The battle music works especially well within the context of the game, because there’s just something about the seriousness (and borderline creepiness) of these moments that fits.

Battle! (Lysandre)

Music to My Ears covers soundtracks or individual songs from video games every Tuesday. You can view all posts in the series by clicking here.