Records: Velevt Goldmine Soundtrack

By Jessica Winter

On some level it's too bad Todd Haynes couldn't get clearance to use David Bowie's recordings for his thinly veiled biopic of the glam-rock icon at the height of his Ziggyness. It would have been cool, on a nostalgic, "Hey, remember that song? Oh, you weren't alive yet either? Yeah," level if Brian Slade were lip-synching to "Starman" instead of Shudder to Think, or if we could float out of the theater during the credits on the feather boa wings of "Velvet Goldmine."

The soundtrack to Velvet Goldmine instead draws heavily upon younger artists to provide some substitute moonage daydreams, and for a film so concerned with representation and fandom, it's appropriate that these young dudes pose like their glittery heroes of yore. Anyway, you've obviously got the wrong end of the mascara wand if you think glam was ever about authenticity.

Yet Velvet Goldmine's soundtrack does have plenty of the real thing. The opener, Brian Eno's "Needle in the Camel's Eye," is one of those songs that invariably causes me to jump up and down and provide unsolicited interpretive commentary such as "This song is so fucking exciting!" Roxy Music's "Virginia Plain" and Lou Reed's "Satellite of Love" are also in evidence, and the spare, unforced whimsy of these standards makes the newer entries, including Grant Lee Buffalo's "The Whole Shebang," appear a little strained. Shudder to Think triumphs with "Hot Ones," as piano glissandoes weave through power chords with fabulously cheesy results and Craig Wedren vacillates between tremulous vibrato and Frank N. Furter-like declaiming. Pulp's "We are the Boys" (indeed!) is another lovely study in contrasts, with Major Tom keyboards vying with a pull-out-the-stops horn section; the only weak link is Jarvis Cocker's saddening lyrics: "We really are the boys/ We don't ask why." My tremulous reply: "We weren't asking, love."

Speaking of fragile pipes, I'm happy to report that Ewan McGregor and Jonathan Rhys Meyers, respectively the film's Iggy and Bowie representatives, do not completely embarrass themselves singing to the accompaniment of the film's "house bands," Wylde Ratttz (Mark Arm! Thurston Moore!) and the Venus in Furs (Thom Yorke! Bernard Butler!). Meyers shares a tinny, slightly unreliable voice with Bowie; the youngun is a bit too whiny in his delivery for a respectable spaceman, but hey, he was hired to pose, not to sing. And, as the CD's scrumptious pull-out sleeve indicates, he poses very well indeed. (Innerstate/London)

Back to A&E...