Coming across a soundtrack album can sometimes be like listening to a friend’s compilation tape – intimate and affecting, with songs linked by spirit rather than theme, band or label. On the other hand, it can simply be a sprinkling of tracks too diverse to involve or cohere and making no sense without the film or series that it supports. The L Word, a U.S. series “about a group of young women in Los Angeles, their lives, careers and romantic relationships – both gay and straight” is accompanied by a soundtrack that is neither daring nor consistent, but that contains tracks that are warm hearted and bleakly romantic. Looking at stills from the series, it all seems to come from the same aesthetic universe as Friends and Sex in the City, in that the main protagonists are healthy, attractive and unthreateningly bohemian – and to an extent.this is reflected by the music.
Track 1 is ‘Genius’ by the now defunct The Murmurs. It’s produced by K.D. Lang and sounds like Suzanne Vega with its barebones guitar and wispy vocals that rise slowly over the soft electric throb of a two chord chorus. This is followed by ‘Right In Time’ by Lucinda Williams, another indie-folk track with electric guitars and sung in the kind of drawl that sounds as if Williams is leaning against a door frame with a cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth. Cool and diverting.
Track 3 is Ella Fitzgerald singing ‘Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall In Love)’. Does it make sense to say that Fitzgerald sings in grainy black and white? That when she sings, you can see wisps of cigarette smoke, and half-lit faces drinking immoderately? Listen to the piano snaking up and down the arrangement. Now listen to it again. I swear the guy plays it differently each time. It’s a class act, even if the lyrics are clunky and trite.
The surprise of the album is that this is not a single peak but the first in a trilogy of disparate classics. ‘Sol Ja Camba’ by Fantcha is a latin torch song with a vocal lower and smokier than Fitgerald, but just as beguiling.
This is followed by Joan Armatrading’s ‘The Weakness In Me’. Technically, Armatrading’s voice sounds thinner, more forced in comparison with the previous two songs, and yet the passion that flows through her voice ensures that ‘Weakness’ sits alongside the others as an equal. It is emotive, literate and accessible, with lyrics that are powerful in their simplicity: “Why do you come here/When you know I’ve got troubles enough?” Armatrading asks an old flame. It’s a troubled, enthralling song and nothing that follows in this album can quite match its intensity.
‘Driving You’ by Shelley Campbell is C&W from the other end of the spectrum. It sounds like a Tanya Donnelly ballad, not quite as barbed but dark and beguiling nevertheless.
‘In Spite Of All The Damage’ by the Be Good Tanyas is trembling folk and is followed by ‘Hallelujah’, a Leonard Cohen song this time performed by Rufus Wainwright. You may have heard ‘Hallelujah’ covered before – in Shrek for instance, or the Cohen tribute album ‘I’m Your Fan’ (performed that time by the Velvets’ John Cale) – and finding it again on the L Word is an unexpected disappointment: it’s a very personal reaction but the track feels misplaced. It’s not clear how such a powerful song could come across as redundant on any album (I mean it worked on Shrek for God’s sake) but here it seems too easy a choice, an attempt to inject gravitas into the proceedings, and it doesn’t work. Wainwright’s delivery feels leaden and incongruous when sandwiched between the likes of Francis and Kinnie Starr.
Starr who sings ‘Alright’ is a discovery for me. Described as a cross between PJ Harvey and Tricky, little of her material has been released as yet and her inclusion on this album is a reminder of the value of compilations. The track has a minimal arrangement – soft programmed rhythms, electric strings and vibraphones but mostly it has Starr’s achingly sensual voice. And that’s all it needs. ‘In The Sun’ by Joseph Arthur is throaty, emotive and in a similar vein to Colett and the Be Good Tanyas.
Overall then, this is an uneven album to a seemingly anodyne TV series, although there are definitely artists in here worth seeking out. It’s a grower with moments of quiet beauty –get ready to skip tracks and fall in love with others. Just like a friend’s compilation tape, really.