Coming across like School of Rock hitting those awkward High School Musical years, Bandslam's soundtrack covers not just the battle of the bands that drives the film's plot, but songs that inspire the film's characters, as well. Though the movie stars teen pop singer/actress
Aly Michalka of
Aly & AJ and High School Musical's
Vanessa Hudgens, its music leans more towards the rock side of the spectrum -- classic rock, in fact:
Bandslam kicks off with
David Bowie's "Rebel Rebel," and later touches on
Nick Drake's yearning with "Road," and
the Velvet Underground's cool with "Femme Fatale" (marking the first and probably only time that
Nico and
Vanessa Hudgens will be in the same project). The soundtrack seems a little desperate to prove its rock-snob chops at times, but the inclusion of songs like these feels as instructive to young listeners as it does potentially reassuring to their parents. What's more, some of the newer songs here are choices that don't feel like product placement.
Wilco's "What Light" fits right in with the more vintage tracks, while Shack's "24 Hours" is surprising as it is welcome. The album stumbles a bit when it tries to balance the time-tested songs with cuts from newer artists and the songs the fictional bands perform in the competition. None of these songs are bad, but they do make the album longer than it should be, and tracks like
Seventeen Evergreen's "Lunar One" and the Daze's "Blizzard Woman Blues" are nice but not exactly necessary. The music from
Bandslam's fictional band I Can't Go On, I'll Go On ends up falling somewhere between School of Rock's heartwarming D.I.Y. vibe and High School Musical's glitz:
Hudgens and
Michalka run the gamut from "Amphetamine"'s chugging punk-pop -- which seems to be the go-to sound for teen movie bands since Josie and the Pussycats -- to a cover of
Jason Robert Brown's theatrical ballad "Someone to Fall Back On."
Bandslam tries to be and do a lot of things, and while it doesn't always succeed, it works well enough that fans of the movie (and their parents) won't be disappointed by the soundtrack.