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Last
year’s sweetheart of the festival circuit,
D.E.B.S.,
is finally to theaters this weekend. In anticipation, the
soundtrack dropped this week with sixteen tracks of sugary
alt-pop lifted from the 80s and the last couple years.
Since
this film is a spoof of teen flicks and Charlie’s
Angels wrapped around a lesbian love story, it would
have been interesting to hear some campy lesbian classics
or even current music that young women listen to. That said,
it is understandable that taste changes and music audiences
are fickle from year to year, so it would be hard to predict
more than a year out what won’t sound dated or overly
trendy.
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What
I’m trying to say in a nice way is don’t expect anything
groundbreaking or that interesting on this soundtrack.
The
solid trio of 80s love songs are The Cure’s “The Love
Cats,” New Order’s “Temptation,” and Erasure’s
“A Little Respect.” These are all fine songs, but
not very challenging or interesting. As current pop culture is
becoming saturated with the 80s music resuscitation, obvious choices
like these are becoming aural acid reflux: not so interesting
after hearing them for the eight thousandth time. At least they
included The Only One’s “Another Girl, Another Planet,"
an underappreciated gem from the late 70s/early 80s that crossed
the punk sound with emerging power pop similar to groups like
XTC and The Pretenders.
Jessy
Moss’ “Telling You Now” is a hot little number.
This slowed-down track is reminiscent of Tricky and Portishead.
Moss is a young Australian female hiphop artist that was discovered
in San Pedro, CA while visiting in the States. This song does
not reflect the influence of her work with West Coast hiphop giants
Cypress Hill, it is much smoother and has more of a downtempo
lounge sensibility. If she doesn’t get morphed into a Kylie
Minogue clone, Moss will definitely be a musician to watch.
I
love “District Sleeps Alone Tonight" when it’s
done by Postal Service, but the Tara King version on this soundtrack
is just okay. It’s full of distracting electronic tweets
and twirps, and King is singing so high it kinda hurt my throat
listening to her. The song wasn’t really reinterpreted,
so I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that this version
was included because it was sung by a female vocalist.
Arizona,
performing “When Do You Play," sounds a little like
if Alison Moyet got loaded with punk band Suicidal Tendencies
in Jennifer Beales’ Flashdance era loft and started
freaking out on some kind of weird moog-like instrument right
before trashing the place. Do these people have a record deal
yet? I’d like to hear more of them.
GoldFrapp
has two songs on here from her 2003 album Black Cherry.
I never liked Goldfrapp’s music, it smacks of pretentious
hipster musical references that I never felt privy to. But it's
well-executed, in a soulless, precise way. “Crystalline
Green” just doesn’t grab me, but “Strict Machine”
is not so bad. It has a little more funkiness to it that makes
it less precious and more accessible.
Canada
contributes more quality rock and roll on "I heart Canada!"
and The Weekend wraps up the album with a sweet little rocker
called “Into The Morning.” Full of deep bass and lyrics
that Melissa Etheridge could have written as a teenager, "Into
the Morning" tells an interesting story of young love, and
The Weekend sound a little like a cross between Joy Division on
Wellbutrin and The Donnas. In other words, pretty rockin!
All
in all, not a fabulous soundtrack, but I’ve heard worse.
Get
the D.E.B.S. Soundtrack
