Various Artists: 50 First Dates

50 First Dates: Love Songs from the Original Motion Picture

(Maverick)

In winter weather, every chance to escape into the sunshine is gladly taken. So if you need some summertime music to help survive these months, then go get a copy of the soundtrack for 50 First Dates. By taking a handful of well-known 80’s songs and remixing them with a reggae twist to fit the movie’s Jamaican setting, this disc delightfully combines the cheesy and spicy elements that every annoyingly catchy summertime song needs. Wayne Wonder’s rendition of “Hold Me Now” is so catchy it could very well be a big hit when it is released as a single this month. Other standouts include UB40’s performance of the Police hit “Every Breath You Take” and Wycleff Jean and Eve’s “Your Love”, a remix that is hard not to get up and dance to.

But not all the tracks are hits. Adam Sandler’s own effort, “Forgetful Lucy”, should be forgotten and never played again. Stick to the unoriginal comedies Adam. And although most of the songs on the album have been remixed ad nauseam, this is the first time Spandau Ballet’s “True” has been turned into a rap song, but to unfortunate results; I fear Gary Kemp would not approve as WILL.I.AM and FERGIE manage to ruin a classic love song that has been a favorite for many years.

All in all, the soundtrack for The Wedding Singer…I mean 50 First Dates, is worthy of a thumbs up. Let’s just hope it will get us through the wind chill factor of the next months until the summer rolls around.

—Elsa B. O’Riain

Einsturzende Neubauten

Perpetuum Mobile

(Mute)

The first time I heard a Neubauten song, I was scared out of my wits—their 1985 album, “Halber Mensch,” opened with a maelstrom of shrieking in semi-decipherable German. Einsturzende Neubauten’s new album Perpetuum Mobile is mellower. While there’s a surprising absence of drills and metal chainsaws, their fondness for power tools and machines is still carried by the airy bellows of plastic tubing, three air compressors, electric fans and large amplified metal springs.

It’s not just their love of sound which defines Neubauten,, but the worlds they conjure. “Ein seltener Vogel” is a sumptuous blend of bird calls and prehistoric drones which convey a dawning sense of catastrophe. With the surging tornadoes of “Ozean und Brandung” and the metallic calm of “Boreas,” the album depicts an expansive sonic landscape with hidden stormy undercurrents unleashed every so often. For the most part, the album is melodic and melancholy, with heartbreaking lyrical outbursts like “Ein leichtes leises Sauseln.”

There’s something intimate and oddly beautiful about Perpetuum Mobile. As vocalist Blixa Bargeld softly utters “was habe ich? / was habe ich nicht” (what do I have? / what don’t I have?) in “Selbstportrait mit Kater,” memories harken back to ’70’s Berlin when the then-young Bargeld and percussionist N.U.Unruh picked metal trash off the streets and, for the first time, beat out their existential angst on the overpass on the Autobahn. “Perpetuum Mobile” inherits the drama of it all with just a tinge of self-mockery beneath the gloom.

—Zhenzhen Lu

Electrelane

The Power Out