Review of Vampire Diaries: Original Television Soundtrack Album by Various Artists
While the teenage vampire programme and film makers are in total overdrive to fulfil the current Twilight obsessed market, The Vampire Diaries has gone beyond this fad and made for strangely compulsive viewing. No mean feat for a cheesy teenagers programme whereby it's difficult to differentiate between the popular and the geeks because everyone is so annoyingly beautiful. The music has in no doubt added to its popularity and for avid viewers there is now the soundtrack album.
In all seriousness, the makers of the show have to be commended for their taste as they have been responsible for putting some more of the leftfield music in our current music spectrum out there for public consumption . Indeed music from such rock'n'roll luminaries as Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and The Black Angels has appeared in episodes. However neither of the former appear on this soundtrack.
Silversun Pickups are a more than welcome inclusion with 'Currency of Love.' Smashing Pumpkins and Gorillaz ply their trade with a somewhat watered down version of what they used to be. Elsewhere Placebo covering Kate Bush's Running Up That Hill is nowhere near as bad as it could have been but is still pretty unremarkable anyway. Which leaves a Tori Amos - alike cover of Tears For Fears 'Head Over Heels' by Digital Daggers and Sleep Alone by Bat For Lashes to supply the albums highlights.
While the producers of the tv show should be commended for including some underground cutting edge acts in their series, the producers of the album could have complemented them and gone one step further. As a result they've missed an opportunity to lift certain bands out of semi-obscurity and have gone with the safe option ie what will be more likely to sell. All in all its not a bad album at all and will no doubt delight fans of the series. Its just that this could have been so much more.
6/10
Scott Causer
