Keith Henderson CD of the week
What a job -putting together an album for The X-Files movie. According to director Chris Carter, none of the artists on the album had been given the opportunity to see the film before going into the studio to record. But then again, who needs to see the movie when you have five seasons of television to go on? And if you haven’t a clue how to feel about Mulder and Scully by then, you shouldn’t be on the album.
Perhaps what stands out about this album is that, in some way or another, every track smacks of The X-Files. Be it the darkness of the sound or the way the songs are composed, there is a place that these tracks take you that triggers the black- suited, paranoid state that is the mythology of Mulder and Scully. Save one or two blotches, like Sting and Aswad’s Invisible Sun, we have an album that, at first listen, seems rather detached and without focus, but after a couple of runs, begins to merge into something more complete – a journey, if you will – into a place not altogether defined and minus the parameters that sometimes come with a soundtrack.
The tracks that are standing out right now include a thrashing speedpunk cover of The Doors’s Crystal Ship by X (naturally) and produced by Ray Manzarek; Tonic’s Flower Man; the dark One More Murder by a decidedly more focused Better Than Ezra; Sarah McLachlan’s aptly titled Black and Soul Coughing’s 16 Horses. But one of the surprises comes from Noel Gallagher, who produces a foreboding trip-hop track called Teotihuacan that has already been played over and over again, along with the Dust Brothers’s The X-Files Theme. A word of advice: skip to 10.13 minutes after the last track.