Pop Beat

** 1/2 Various artists, “The X-Files” soundtrack, Elektra. As any “Files”-o-phile knows, the truth is out there. And that’s just where the best tracks on this collection for the big-screen spinoff land, from Filter’s oddly disturbed and disturbing version of the Three Dog Night hit “One” to the instrumental “Teotihuacan” by Oasis’ Noel Gallagher, more or less a piano and electronics variation on “Purple Haze.”

Such reliable outsiders as Bjork and Soul Coughing also offer nicely skewed takes on alternate realities, while Sarah McLachlan veers into haunted Sinead O’Connor territory on her new “Black” and X gets spooky on the Doors’ “Crystal Ship.” To wrap it up, the Dust Brothers put a solid dance beat to Mark Snow’s indelible “X-Files Theme.”

Still, it’s disconcerting that much of the rest of this set steers right down the middle. Tonic, the Foo Fighters (unlikely purveyors of what seems to be the film’s love theme, “Walking After You”), the team of Sting and reggae band Aswad remaking the Police’s “Invisible Sun,” the Cure and even Ween all make contributions that are decidedly normal, not paranormal--though arguably there’s nothing weirder than the notion of Ween being normal.

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Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent).