V/A: Lost Highway (2LP, soundtrack) [INTERSCOPE]

Why you'll love it

The 2LP set spreads Trent Reznor's dark, glittering sequence over four sides. It reached No. 7 on the Billboard 200, went gold in the US and platinum in Canada.

This edition

• 2LP set

About the album

David Lynch asked Trent Reznor to put this together, and Reznor set himself a neat challenge: a record for Lynch fans who can't stand pop music that still works for the teenager who buys it for one new song. Lynch picked artists who had inspired him, and the result plays like a long night drive with somebody else's mixtapes. A mutual friend had suggested Reznor for the job in the first place.

David Bowie's "I'm Deranged" bookends the album, Nine Inch Nails' "The Perfect Drug" is one of Reznor's great singles, and Lou Reed turns "This Magic Moment" into something gorgeous and eerie. The Smashing Pumpkins' "Eye," Marilyn Manson's "Apple Of Sodom" and "I Put A Spell On You" and two Rammstein tracks bring the heat, while Angelo Badalamenti, Barry Adamson and Reznor's own instrumentals hold the mood, and Antonio Carlos Jobim's "Insensatez" drifts in like a dream. Coil's Peter Christopherson added production to "Videodrones; Questions" and "Driver Down."

Lynch's film was famously hard to explain, but the soundtrack has never needed a plot summary. We'd still recommend keeping the lights on.

Also at Kops: more Lost Highway on vinyl · browse Soundtracks

Tracklist

Listen

On Nothing / Interscope (cat# B0026362-01), a reissue of the 1997 soundtrack.