IN THEIR EYES

OK, so John Hughes movies defined growing up in the '80s, and the pre-teen fantasies of many of today's adolescents involved falling in love to songs like O.M.D.'s "If You Leave". And the recent '80s revival shows that it's apparently not just my blocking group friends who are obsessed with John Cusack holding up that boombox in Say Anything. Plus, every generation wants to take on the songs they grew up with. Reasons, reasons, reasons. Do they merit a full album of covers of teen movie themes from the '80s?

Sadly enough, the answer in this case has to be `no'. In Their Eyes: '90s Teen Bands Vs. '80s Teen Movies presents 15 relatively unknown bands performing songs from the soundtracks of great John Hughes movies (for those not in the know, they are Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller's Day Off--whew), and other defining '80s teen movies like Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Say Anything. The gimmick here is that all the bands are comprised of teenagers, representing the sway these movies hold on today's adolescents. Considering the band members represent a generation that wasn't even old enough to go to the cinema without their parents when these movies came out, this may seem odd--but then, perhaps because they weren't actual teens, they were able to take the often mushy emotions in both the movies and their accompanying soundtracks at face value.

That inability to critically assess their material hurts this compilation. Youth, one might think, would work well here, imparting pubescent angst to these most angst-ridden of tunes. Unfortunately, most of the bands featured have too much respect for the songs they cover, playing them in much the same style with only minor changes of tempo or instrumentation. This forces one inevitably to compare the originals--and the comparison often comes up short. The Gadjits' take on the Simple Minds classic "Don't You (Forget About Me)," for example, preserves the source's arrangement down to the deep voices and the "hey hey hey hey" that opens the song, but loses its longing tone. If you ignored the liner notes, you might think you were hearing a bootleg recording of '80s cover bands: few of the bands display any trace of '90s influence, and none dares to be snarky or ironic. Yet in playing it straight, they can't seem to match, let alone outdo, the original levels of emotion.

It is those songs which go out on a limb that actually come close to recapturing or even surpassing the spirit of the originals. The English League's mildly hip-hop influenced version of Oingo Boingo's "Weird Science" is an appropriately goofy take on a goofy song, complete with a melodramatic repetition of "she's alive!," while F.O.N.'s Californianska take on The Cars' "You Might Think" is appropriately trippy. But these are few and far between. Instead, we get mediocre takes on "Pretty in Pink," "I Melt With You" and "If You Leave."

I'll admit, in spite of all that carping, this album put a smile on my face. But it also made me reach for my CD collection and look for the originals. If the bands' aim was exposure, as the addresses of their record companies in the liner notes seems to indicate, a better strategy might have been to distinguish themselves and not parrot the originals--the ready-made market for '80s nostalgia would mean they would have gotten heard anyway. As it stands, however, In Their Eyes comes across as an album trying to ride on the coattails of the '80s revival. Just like many of the original singers faded away with the passing of the decade, many of these bands seem destined to become throwaways, more fodder for the discount bin.

It's now "fairly economical for a band to self-record and release a seven-inch or a CD," the liner notes tell us. That may be true, but just because they can is no reason for you to waste your time listening to them. Pick up the Best of New Order or Depeche Mode 101 instead. Or rent Pretty in Pink and sing along with the original tunes. Altogether now: "I touch you once/Touch you twice/Won't let go at any price"...