Album Review: Almost Alice by Various Artists

As part of the marketing campaign for the Tim Burton-directed Alice, the Walt Disney Company commissioned this various-artists album, which might as well be called "Songs from, Inspired by, or Related to Alice," but is instead dubbed Almost Alice. The idea was to have a collection of pop/rock performers come up with material having something to do with Alice in Wonderland, including, as the lead-off track, Avril Lavigne's "Alice," which actually plays under the end credits of the movie. Lavigne's song is a typical piece of self-assertive adolescent pop/rock, with its tag line "Don't you try to stop me," just the sort of thing to be chanted by a pre-adolescent who doesn't want to go to bed.

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What does ?Wonderland sound like? Any pop station on the dial, more or less, if Almost Alice, this companion to Tim Burton’s latest film is any indication. The tunes come in various flavors — shrill and self-?important (Avril Lavigne), plodding and grungy (Shinedown), grating and synth — based (3OH!3) — yet with a few exceptions, none are original enough to hold your attention past the first chorus. For music ostensibly inspired by a trippy fantasy, far too much here is depressingly ordinary.

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Would Lewis Carroll have been an Avril Lavigne fan? Would the very concept of a Mark Hoppus and Pete Wentz collaboration have had his heart racing? Would Owl City or the All-American Rejects have ticked any boxes for him? Probably not. Then again, how many of the artists featured on Almost Alice was Tim Burton really desperate to include on his latest film’s accompanying rock compilation? One or two maybe – I suspect he’s a Robert Smith fan, but I doubt he had any Plain White T’s albums playing on the set of Alice In Wonderland. So how did we get from slightly-overrated-gothic-visionary-animator-director reinterprets impeccably-surreal-Victorian-children’s-book to Almost Alice? Well, the process seems to have begun with some bloke in a suit deciding that Tim Burton was down with the rock kids.

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A great idea some distance short of being properly realised. Mike Diver 2010 Disney’s Tim Burton-directed Alice in Wonderland is certain to dominate the box office when it opens. This compilation features a similar level of marquee names – Avril Lavinge, The Cure’s Robert Smith, chart successes 3OH!3 and Owl City; the film stars Johnny Depp, Christopher Lee and Helena Bonham Carter – but lacks imagination enough to make it memorable on its own merits.

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Judging by this soundtrack, Alice didn't wake up in a fantastical world of talking rabbits and tea parties but, rather, a suburban mall parking lot. And instead of a goofy-looking Johnny Depp greeting her, she got Avril Lavigne on a skateboard. [rssbreak] Not so much Wonderland as Wonderbread, Lavigne, the All-American Rejects, Tokio Hotel, Owl City and other formulaic teen angst purveyors take dumps on this comp, which has the distinct, foul reek of Disney marketing.

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