Thankfully, those intentionally bad numbers represent the only duds on the Ghost World soundtrack, which Zwigoff has bolstered with decades-old selections from his personal record collection. Opening with Mohammed Rafi's rollicking garage/surf number "Jaan Pehechaan Ho," the best opening-credits fit since Pulp Fiction forever married itself to Dick Dale's "Misirlou," the Ghost World album unearths more than a dozen valuable obscurities. Its lost classics -- sparsely orchestrated tunes on which nimbly picked guitar lines and wailing vocals duet with the crackle of needle on vinyl -- make Blueshammer (and its real-life ilk) seem even more ridiculous. By including timeless takes on loneliness and lost love from the likes of Skip James and Robert Wilkins, Zwigoff also points out the folly of assuming that depictions of alienated youth must be accompanied by maudlin tunes from the latest teen-targeting pop acts. And David Kitay's score, the beauty of its crystalline keys and strings tempered by its haunting melody, provides a perfectly bittersweet ending to both an emotionally complex film and to a soundtrack that pines for a classic era while it bemoans the worst of music's current crop.
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