First Months Yield Some Good Soundtrack Hunting

Because record companies don’t tend to release many albums early in the year, January and February give us a chance in the $50 Guide to catch up on some holdovers from 1997, especially some delightfully appealing soundtracks.

JANUARY

“Good Will Hunting” soundtrack, Capitol. It’s strange that someone would go to the trouble of finding some obscure Elliott Smith songs that work beautifully with the film’s wistful theme, and then play them so quietly that you can barely hear them in the theater. Maybe it’s just a plot to sell the soundtrack album, which contains five tunes by Smith, whose roster-mates at the indie label Kill Rock Stars included Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney. Smith’s songs here--including the Oscar-nominated “Miss Misery”--share some of the folk delicacy of early Simon & Garfunkel, but they are in no way retreads. The tunes are coated with the kind of melancholy undercurrents that make dreams seem at once distant and sweet. As a bonus, the album includes such guaranteed oldies as Al Green’s “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart” and the Waterboys’ “Fisherman’s Blues.”

“The End of the Violence” soundtrack, Outpost. I haven’t seen the Wim Wenders film, so I don’t know how the music works in it, but the album is classy and diverse, thanks to a cast that ranges from such reliable vets as Ry Cooder and Tom Waits to two of L.A.’s choicest bands, Spain and Eels. There’s also a surprising (and effective) pairing of the once-warring U2 and Sinead O’Connor, as well as some of the turntable mastery of DJ Shadow. The music is mostly dark, but almost all of it is commanding.

“The Full Monty” soundtrack, RCA Victor. The “Boogie Nights” soundtrack received lots of attention, but this 13-song package, which is also ‘70s dance-minded, is more consistent and fun, thanks to such numbers as Hot Chocolate’s “You Sexy Thing,” Donna Summer’s “Hot Stuff” and Tom Jones’ lively remake of Randy Newman’s hilarious “You Can Leave Your Hat On.”

FEBRUARY

“Jackie Brown” soundtrack, Maverick. Here’s more of the fun “Full Monty” spirit, only with more diversity and a funk base. Highlights range from Bobby Womack’s “Across 110th Street” (the soundtrack of that 1972 action film, incidentally, has been released for the first time on CD by Rykodisc), Randy Crawford’s “Street Life” and, in true guilty-pleasure fashion, the Grass Roots’ cheesy “Midnight Confessions.” In the tradition of the “Pulp Fiction” album, the collection also contains pieces of dialogue from the Quentin Tarantino film.

Pearl Jam, “Yield,” Epic. From the tender, idealistic “Wistful” to the playful yet pointed “Do the Evolution,” the best-selling American rock band of the ‘90s continues to mature as musicians and songwriters. Like the band’s “Vitalogy” and “No Code” albums, this is classic rock in the best sense.

Various artists, “Buena Vista Social Club,” World Circuit/Nonesuch. This collection, which is up for a Grammy in the best Latin tropical performance category, could be the soundtrack for a documentary crying to be made. It’s the result of Ry Cooder’s 1996 pilgrimage to Cuba where he, yes, played guitar, but mostly served as producer for a summit meeting of some of that country’s most respected musicians, including pianist Ruben Gonzalez and singer-songwriter Compay Segundo. The music reflects the classiness of Cooder’s own soundtrack recordings with an added Caribbean dimension that is warm and enriching.