The soundtrack for "The Royal Tennenbaums" hasn't left my CD changer since I bought it. Now, that was only three days ago, but still. Black comedies are one thing, but this is a black soundtrack. With the exception of the 91-second head rush of the Ramones "Judy is a Punk", and a few of Mark Mothersbaugh's tongue-in-cheek playful interludes (i.e. "Pagoda's Theme") this is an album of dark, disturbing retro-pop posing as a cash-in companion to a major motion picture. It's one thing for a soundtrack to carry morbid symphonic weight, i.e. emotion rattling films such as "Schindler's List", "The Last Temptation of Christ", any war film, and about a million others. It's an entirely different seduction when you employ not one, but two Nico songs. The last time I checked, Nico wasn't the sort of chanteuse whose name and music are prone to drip thoughts of "Hollywood Glitz". Ditto Nick Drake. Ditto Elliot Smith's moody, empty, delicate "Needle in the Hay". And who was the genius who chose the Velvet's "Stephanie Says", the most criminally overlooked uber-classic in their deep back catalogue?

In fact, the whole CD is like a collection of jewels in the rough made by a vinyl-obsessed loner, whose sole purpose was to cull a soundtrack full of artists that never show up on Hollywood soundtracks. It's less a soundtrack that a mix tape traded between profoundly sensitive goth teens in love. Hmmm. Maybe there's a Hollywood film in there after all.