Psycho - Soundtrack CD

One of the strangest remakes in a genre already verging on a sideshow of inbred congenital deformities, director Gus Van Sant's shot-for-shot re-creation of Alfred Hitchcock's shocker Psycho begs the question: What if Kinko's ran Hollywood? Which probably isn't fair to Kinko's. Given Van Sant's virtual-film sensibility and typical record-label-niche-marketing obsessions (now, there's a psychological thriller), this album ends up being the project's most original facet by default, if only because it's a spawn of that dreaded new genre, "music from and inspired by the motion picture." "From" gets repped by three of master Bernard Herrmann's original Psycho cues, run through--make that over--by Danny Elfman at a tempo that only an antsy crankhead could appreciate. "Inspired by" is a decidedly mixed bag that runs the gamut from typical Rob Zombie hoodoo ("Living Dead Girl") to embarrassing alternative folk (James Hall's painful--and painfully obvious--cover of the Talking Heads' "Psycho Killer"). Even the occasional interesting track ("Madhouse" by Mono; Lamb's "Fly" ) often succumbs to the project's photocopier philosophy and ham-fisted thematics; four of the pop songs contain samples from Herrmann's score, including hapless Steve Earle being punctuated--if not punctured--by the piercing strains of the infamous shower scene. Where's Tom Bodett when you need him? Our advice for the next album that's a soundtrack to a remake of a classic film:  the toner