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T2’s soundtrack doesn’t just smack of the past, though; it gets a timely revamp alongside that seminal “choose life” speech. Edinburgh’s Young Fathers appear three times, magnetic in their scrappy ardor; despite winning the 2014 Mercury Prize for their debut, Dead, the Scottish-Liberian-Nigerian trio remain undersung for their high-velocity, socially astute experimental hip-hop. Director Danny Boyle has called their new track here, “Only God Knows,” the “Born Slippy”-style “heartbeat” of T2; it shares that adrenaline, their own rough-and-tumble abandon (“Only God knows that the people are cheating/Only God knows you don’t need him”) merging smoothly with a gospel choir.

In fact, hip-hop-absent from Trainspotting-scores the best scene in T2. As Renton accidentally reunites with the homicidal Begbie in a club bathroom (one of T2’s many winking callbacks to toilets), Jason Nevins’ rattling remix of Run-D.M.C.’s “It’s Like That” thumps with palpable humidity, unyielding in four-to-the-floor rigor. (The 1997 track, a UK hit at the time, feels singularly like a return to roots for Boyle; his last film soundtracks have been tempered affairs, anchored by Bob Dylan and the Maccabees, Moby and Unkle, and Bill Withers and A.R. Rahman.) Elsewhere, the Welsh drum’n’bass DJ High Contrast whips up a fatalistic film opener in “Shotgun Mouthwash;” the acidic staccato mimics the drums of “Lust for Life” and abets a series of fitting poor-bastard asides. (The bleakest: “Last night I dreamt I went to Woodstock but I only saw Sha-Na-Na.”) The dusky London shoegazers Wolf Alice, the British surf-rockers Fat White Family, and the bawdy Irish comedy duo the Rubberbandits round out the new class ably.

The success of T2’s soundtrack, and the film itself, lies in its sense of contentment; it doesn’t lobby to be seminal again. It’s as exuberant as its predecessor, with some honest grit flaking against the more mannered sentimentality; it keeps a popular hearth warm and has a kicking, striving spine. To paraphrase an old friend: T2’s still got a great fucking personality.