Original Soundtrack
Limbo (Columbia/Sony Music Soundtrax 69994)

Finally! An album with tracks by Bruce Springsteen AND Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio!

Unfortunately for everyone, the Springsteen track just sits there while the Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio tracks attempt to redefine reality and music as we've come to know it.

This album is pure shit. I see no reason why anyone would want it, and I hope that anyone that gets it doesn't try to fool themselves into thinking it's good, or even tolerable, just because they spent money on it that would have been better used buying – well, buying ANYTHING but this total tax-write-off.

I haven't seen the movie, but I'm willing to declare it a piece of shit based on the soundtrack. Truly it is the presence of Ms. Mastrantonio's hopeless singing, which might be described as Cybill Shepherd trying to imitate Mary Chapin Carpenter, which is a bad enough idea in theory.

In the annals of celebrity singing, this one ranks among the worst I've heard, and it's not bad in the good way. Her take on Chuck Berry's "You Never Can Tell" is about as hard to stomach as, say, that Chuck Berry video where he passes gas on the girl who's giving him head, except at least in that case, it's interesting.

The bar-band arrangements don't help. I don't know if in the movie she's supposed to be some kind of bad bar-band singer or what, but all's I know is the album is a real trial to sit through.

Which is not to say I bothered with all 37 minutes. Mastrantonio builds an aesthetic "Abyss" with four stunningly awful tracks, including a version of Tom Waits' "Heart of Saturday Night" and Richard Thompson's "Dimming of the Day." The only thing that seems appropriate to say is "P.U.!"

Throw in several arbitrary instrumental tracks and some limp cajun rock and you have something that not even the "Prairie Home Companion" crowd could enjoy. Fuck this, I hate this. I can't even maintain a sense of humor about it, I mean, for whatever it cost to make this CD, someone could have done something constructive, like throw the money in an incinerator just to watch it burn. At least there might have been entertainment value in that; there sure isn't in this.

Review by Tron Trutron