The soundtrack to hit new indie film Thumbsucker is, essentially, the third album by former Tripping Daisy mainman Tim Delaughter and his esoteric bunch of frocked fruitloops, The Polyphonic Spree.

Well, it almost is – if it wasn’t for the presence of a handful of acoustic odes from dearly departed songwriter Elliott Smith. It’s remarkable how much his simple songs stand out amidst the sea of noise coming from the Polyphonic Spree. It takes five tracks before his cover of Big Star’s “Thirteen” comes in, and after that, everything by the Polyphonic Spree is just a means of getting to the next Elliott Smith number.

Now, this is not saying bad against the Polyphonic Spree. But with much of their contributions to the soundtrack to Thumbsucker being incidental musical moments, Elliott’s two cover songs (the aforementioned “Thirteen”, plus Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam’s “Trouble) and one original (“Let’s Get Lost”) are just that. Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone? So it would seem.