VA - City Of Angels - Music From The Motion Picture (1998)

Call it a soundtrack producer's dream. One of the most vital and influential bands in modern-day music cuts a song entitled "If God Will Send His Angels" just months before you are hired to put together a soundtrack for a movie entitled City of Angels. The band is U2, and their song not only opens the City of Angels soundtrack, but it is also the anchor of a group of tracks that narrowly escapes the sappy trail that the movie blazed when it hit theaters. In all actuality, the soundtrack sounds much too dark, menacing, and legitimate to be attached to the film. Alanis Morissette assures the direction of the album when she follows U2's less-than-perky offering with "Uninvited," which is nothing if not vintage Alanis. From there on the quality drops off somewhat, but not until after Jimi Hendrix comes in with "Red House." It's still amazing to this day how the sounds of Hendrix on the guitar could be so many things all at the same time -- soothing, moving, eerie, and untouchable. In what amounts to the same effect as pulling the emergency brake while traveling down the highway, the producers followed up Hendrix with one of music's most overrated commodities: Paula Cole. As popular belief would tell you, the movie is rarely better than the book. While the same has not been proven conclusively in the relationship of movies and their soundtracks, be assured that City of Angels is much better to listen to than to watch.~City of Angels [Original Soundtrack] Review by David M. Childers