My Name Is Earl - The Album
NBC's hit comedy series about a likeable degenerate who wins $100,000 in the lottery, gets hit by a car, loses his winning ticket, and tries to reverse his karma by making amends to everyone he's ever hoodwinked succeeds in duplicating the goofy, feel-good mood of the show. Mixing dialogue snippets with proven rock and country hits employed in first-season episodes, the repertoire also includes an instrumentally annoying, if rhythmically hypnotic, vocal version of the show's theme song by the tongue-twisting Nescobar-a-lop-lop and the Camden Country Band.  Matthew Sweet, Uncle Kracker, and headbangers Van Nuys show up with new recordings of songs which appeared on the show, while John Hiatt's engaging, ripsaw rendition of John Lennon's "Instant Karma!" seems included only to make hay from actor Jason Lee's mantra ("Karma is a funny thing"). The surprise is that the soundtrack manages to seem thoroughly contemporary, even though many of the tracks--particularly Sammy Davis Jr.'s rendition of "Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette)" may be older than Earl himself.--Alanna Nash