Getting its first audio release 50 years after the titular special made its 1975 television debut, Vince Guaraldi’s soundtrack is dissimilar to much of what the musician composed for previous Peanuts specials, yet also sounds just like Charlie Brown and the gang making their way down the street. This is, of course, what made the jazzer/cartoonist relationship between Guaraldi and Charles M. Schulz so special. 

“Motocross,” which appears in a full, nearly four-minute iteration and six reprises, is built around a gurgling electric bass line, faux strings, skittering percussion and brass. It represents the show’s main theme and withdrawals images of the animated characters deposited long ago in listeners’ childhood memory banks. The new LP also includes snippets of studio chatter, unused cues like “Fanfare” and updated iterations of “Peppermint Patty” and “Linus and Lucy,” which adopt “Sport”’s fusion approach and remain instantly identifiable despite their obvious divergences from the originals. 

The producers tacked on four bonus cuts from Guaraldi’s 1974’s score for “Bicycles are Beautiful,” which, despite their different origins, mesh nicely with the Peanuts’ soundtrack that precedes them.