Singles enjoyed...

As a movie, it's a pretty nice success, taking a near-perfect snapshot of a scene that most of us never had an opportunity to be a part of - Seattle in the early 90's, the birthplace and melting pot of grunge, Mecca of flannel. They even brought in Eddie Vedder and the rest of Pearl Jam to play the house band at the local coffee shop in the movie.

And the soundtrack does an equally great job of casting that scene in bronze and leaving it for us who remember it to enjoy. We live in a time where movie soundtracks grab tracks from various artists hoping to craft a coehisive whole as though it were a single-artist-created album. Rarely, however, does this work. Instead we often get a series of singles from different groups that sort of string together. Singles is perfect. It plays from first track onward as a great album from a scene - not necessarily from an a single artist - but a perfect frozen moment of time from Seattle - adding in a few artists from otherwhere (Smashing Pumpkins, Paul Westerberg) who fit perfectly in style. We even get a track from Jimi Hendrix, father god of the Seattle scene. The only possible knock here is that we're missing Nirvana, the first group to open the Seattle scene to the world.

If you get any joy from Pearl Jam or Soundgarden or Mother Love Bone, this is the holy grail for you. This isn't the best album ever, but it's like a photograph that has a little blur here or there, a flash of light that doesn't quite work, but that captures a memory for you just the exact way you remember it, allowing you to relive a time and place.