Various - (500) Days ofSummer soundtrack

Mon 14th Sep, 2009 in Music Reviews

It’s not fair, really. You’ve got Zooey Deschanel’s elfin face on the cover and The Smiths’ era-defining There Is A Light That Never Goes Out three tracks in and already my critical faculties are blown. And soundtracks are strange beasts, really, always hard to judge.

For every carefully chosen collection (see Lost In Translation ), there are scores of randomly thrown together compilations, often featuring music only heard fleetingly in the film, if at all. The selections are seemingly more dictated by who has stock piling up at the record company office than any connection with the film. But with its music-obsessed, Clash T-shirt-wearing protagonist, (500) Days… seems a better bet than most.

For all its promise, though, and the presence of some eternal classics, mostly courtesy of The Smiths, (500) Days of Summer falls short in its final stretches, losing cohesion and momentum and ultimately rates as a hit-and-miss collection. In an era where iTunes and MP3 blogs have made it all too easy to cherry pick the highlights of an album rather than buying in its entirety, it’s difficult to see who exactly needs all these songs.

It scores with Feist’s sexy ode to Canadian domesticity, Mushaboom, and Doves’ majestic, sky-kissing There Goes The Fear. Both tracks are on the way to classic status, though it’s a safe bet that anybody who wants these tracks has them already. A more left-field choice is Black Lips’ Bad Kids, a thrilling bit of garage-rock cacophony marked by a Joey Ramone sneer and thumping percussion.

Wolfmother’s Vagabond feels out of place though, and Meaghan Smith’s Here Comes Your Man is only inspiring in that it inspires you to play the Pixies original instead of this competent but unnecessary cover. Then there’s Temper Trap’s Sweet Disposition, their best song, but again one that feels like an arbitrary selection. Hall and Oates’ soft rock radio staple You Make My Dreams, meanwhile, has not aged well, which is a problem since it came out in 1980.

The Smiths only seem more remarkable as time passes however, and their Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want is immaculate. It’s disappointing then that She & Him’s cover of the tune comes across as the musical equivalent of setting up two friends you really like and finding they have no chemistry at all, with Zooey Deschanel’s beautifully clear voice apparently unsuited to the song’s dramatics.

Billing itself as a “story of Boy Meets Girl, but…not a love story”, (500) Days of Summer does, fittingly enough, depart from the indie rom-com soundtrack template. Not all its diversions are worthwhile, but there are definitely a couple of gems here, none better or more unexpected than Carla Bruni’s Quelqu’un M’a Dit, a lovely, mellow slice of retro French pop with a hummable melody and an undertone of introspection. If it’s not quite enough to inspire a fully-fledged love affair with this soundtrack, it does at least create some kind of passing passion.

(500) Days of Summer is out now on Warner Music.