Review: Duran Duran, 'Once' Soundtrack

Review: Duran Duran, 'Once' Soundtrack

Duran Duran 'Red Carpet Massacre': Aidin Vaziri | Duran Duran may never make another album as sexy or stupid as 1982's "Rio," but the band doesn't stop trying. While other past-their-sell-by-date members of the Band Aid choir - Sting, George Michael, Bono - have been maturing as people, refining their craft and rolling around in piles of wet cash, Simon Le Bon and company have seemingly grown more and more imbecilic with each new release (give or take the fluke "Ordinary World"). On the group's latest, Justin Timberlake and producer Timbaland are summoned to, I don't know, make the perpetual adolescents sound vaguely appealing to 13-year-old girls by playing robotic, loveless electro pop? "I am here to tempt you/ Ohhh, yeah," Le Bon sings on "Tempted." Imagine an album that sounds a bit like the Human League with a different singer. One that bleats like an orgasmic Chihuahua. It's so wrong that it's right.

Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová 'Once' Soundtrack: Aidin Vaziri | How did this one slip through the cracks? Maybe it's because the cover photo of the scruffy couple threatens to rehash "Before Sunrise," but get past that, and the folk-tinged soundtrack to this art-house love story is a stunner. Composed and played by the amateur stars of the movie - Glen Hansard, front man of Irish rockers the Frames, and Markéta Irglová, a teenage prodigy from the Czech Republic - the songs capture the authentic romantic cravings the musicians grappled with during the two-week shoot. That they ended up a couple in real life only makes songs such as "Falling Slowly" and "Once" resonate even stronger, evoking the kind of musical heartbreak last heard on Damien Rice's "O." Released in May, the album will get a deluxe reissue in December. Don't miss it again.