Lost Highway

by

Various Artists

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Movie soundtracks are often a bit of a letdown. You see a movie, enjoy it, rush out to get the soundtrack, and basically end up with a lot of substandard pop tunes and instrumentals that fall flat without the movie to back them up. Lost Highway stands defiantly against that trend. This is a rare soundtrack that can actually stand separate from the film that spawned it. With its collection of dark, industrial-tinged songs and compositions, the Lost Highway Sountrack actually stands alone as a work of art while also transporting the listener back into the strange and disturbing world created by David Lynch's fascinating head trip of a film. David Bowie's "I'm Deranged" is the perfect song to kick off the soundtrack and establishes the addictively apocalyptic feel that permeates the rest of the CD. At first alternating between the explosive, end-of-the-world vibe of The Smashing Pumpkins and especially's Trent Reznor's "Perfect Drug," the CD eventually leads more and more into a Hellish dreamworld scored by Marilyn Manson (whose cover of "I Put A Spell On You" proves that there actually is talent behind all the artifice) and Rammstien (proving that the German language is one of the most threatening sounds out there -- as well as that not all Germans love David Hasselhoff). Lou Reed's cover of "That Magic Moment" is probably the highlight of the CD, showing how a visionary musical artist can both celebrate and recreate a song at the same time but I'm also partial to Barry Adamson's instrumentals -- which, much like Lynch's film, somehow manages to be humorously campy and deadly serious at the same time. Beyond all the pointless analyzing, what it all comes down to is this -- The Lost Highway Soundtrack is the perfect CD for anyone who wants their musical collection to leave them exhausted, exhilarated, struggling for breath. In short, its amazing.

This could have been something really special. Instead Reznor gets to highlight a few great tracks (starting with the relatively too-strong several tracks) but fades into irrelevance before and throughout its second half. Sadly Badalamenti's showbiz-jazz, which makes up the majority of his entries, just don't stand up to repeated listens like we expect from his deeper textures. In the end, as if to blatantly wake listeners up from stupor, another NIN track which could have been a Downward Spiral outtake and the Bowie reprise remind us to forget a majority of mediocrity.