Ralphy's C.D. Reviews

Review date 09-12-1998: Soundtrack City of Angels

I'm usually against buying samplers or soundtracks, but in this case I made an exception. The reasons were 2 songs on the album namely "Uninvited" and "Iris". "Uninvited" became, although never released as a single, a well known song all over the world and I personally consider it among the best Alanis Morissette ever wrote or performed. "Iris" is a song that I noticed during my vacation in the States in July/August. During our roundtrip I heard it repeatedly on the car radio and I immediately fell in love with it. This single and the follow-up album of the Goo Goo Dolls (a band I had never heard of, but these 3 guys from Buffalo already made 6 CD's in the USA) "Dizzy up the girl" are not and will not be released in Holland (PS they are now) and this and the fact that "Uninvited" would not be on "Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie", Alanis's new album led me to buy this soundtrack. Next to these 2 songs there is another highlight on this soundtrack and that's "Angel" by Sarah McLachlan. This Canadian singer with her distinctive voice is extremely popular in North America, but in Europe she's (sadly) still only an insider-tip.

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The music on this soundtrack can be divided into 3 different styles. First you have the pop/rock songs with contributions, besides the 3 above mentioned, by Paula Cole (a kind of heavy breathing song), Jude (don't know them and this song isn't a reason to), U2 and Peter Gabriel (not bad songs, but they've done better). The second style is blues with old songs of John Lee Hooker, Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton. Especially "Red House" by Jimi and Eric Clapton's "Further up on the road" are fine examples of the best blues can offer, although it's nothing new under the sun. The third kind of music on this album is the obvious instrumental background music you will find in every movie. Composer Gabriel Yared included 4 film-compositions in which the acoustic guitar sequences were, to me, the best parts. Nice for fans, but for the lovers of the two other presented styles it won't add anything to the album, which is exactly the problem of this CD. As mentioned it contains some (very) good songs, but it's not an album, but a collection of totally different songs, which again confirms my prejudice against samplers/soundtracks with which this review started. Due to the quality of some of these individual tracks, my overall rating for this soundtrack is a 6.1 .

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