Record Rack

** 1/2 Various artists, “Anywhere but Here” soundtrack, Atlantic. It would be churlish to criticize this flawlessly pleasant collection (in stores Tuesday) of songs by female artists, which provides the soundtrack to the new Susan Sarandon-Natalie Portman drama. All of the tracks at least do a nice job of capturing the elegiac yet hopeful mood of the Mona Simpson novel that was adapted for the film. But it’s ultimately a roundup of the usual Lilith Fair suspects, and though it’s great to hear strong tracks from k.d. lang, Patty Griffin and Sarah McLachlan, it’s sort of like gorging on cotton candy.

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Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent). The albums are already released unless otherwise noted.