Artist: Various
Album: Monster-In-Law Soundtrack
Label: New Line Records
Tracks: 13
Review By: Jacob Gehman

Soundtracks generally get viewed as a novelty piece. If you’ve seen a movie and enjoyed it, you might enjoy the musical soundtrack as a way of reliving the film without the visuals and mucking around in dialogue. A few soundtracks have broken this trend and have breathed a life of their own. Recently the Garden State soundtrack would be a good example. Or, a number of years back, the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack.

It is very doubtful that this soundtrack will be giving wings like that. It will always be tied in with the movie as a companion item for those who found themselves crying by the time the credits rolled around. Unsurprisingly, I was not crying by the credits. Even less surprising, I never bothered seeing the movie to found out if I would be crying by the credits. Yet, after seeing the artist list on Amazon, I was curious to see how well the album worked.

The cd is composed of female artist after female artist. The two names that jumped out at me were Jem and Nellie McKay, however also has people like Rachael Yamagata, Dar Williams, and Joss Stone. Even the indie crowd gets featured by an appearances by Tegan and Sara.

Out of 13 tracks, there are only a couple of uninteresting songs. The album starts off with a remix of “Love” by Rosey, which is definitely less interesting than the original. While the melody is familiar, the remix takes away the tenderness and heart that made the original song worth hearing.

After that, though, there is a solid performance followed by solid performance. While definitely not the next O Brother, Where Art Thou? this album stands strong as a who’s who guide to the current faces of female-driven singer/songwriters. It’s too bad that the album’s focus is movie promotion, as we get spoon-fed with the lame Monster-in-Law artwork, featuring fake smiles on fake actresses in fake situations. This album would make a solid iTunes download, where you get spared the pictures, or as a used cd bargain bin purchase.