Little Miss Sunshine
Don't be fooled by the "various artists" credited as performing on this soundtrack: the CD actually has a rather uniform tone, and mercifully it's a lovely one. Composer Mychael Danna is paired with the Denver band DeVotchKa, who perform his score and offer a few tunes of their own. Making excellent use of strings, tuba, and squeezebox, they set a mood that echoes the movie's warmly idiosyncratic one. On top of that, it's hard not to like DeVotchKa's singer Nick Urata, whose high-lonesome croon falls somewhere between Roy Orbison and the Magnetic Fields' Stephin Merritt. Sensitive indie troubadour Sufjan Stevens contributes two wonderful songs that display his usual flair for clever arrangements, especially "No Man's Land." Wait, did I say "uniform tone"? A pair of uptempo dance numbers interrupt the flow toward the end: Tony Tisdale's "Catwalkin'" and a remix of Rick James's classic "Superfreak"--the effect of that song suddenly barging in is akin to hearing Jamiroquai's "Canned Heat" inNapoleon Dynamite.--Elisabeth Vincentelli