Garden State

1	Don't Panic / Coldplay
2	Caring Is Creepy / The Shins
3	In The Waiting Line - Zero 7 / Zero 7
4	New Slang / The Shins
5	I Just Don't Think I'll Ever Get Over You / Colin Hay
6	Blue Eyes / Cary Brothers
7	Fair / Remy Zero
8	One Of These Things First / Nick Drake
9	Lebanese Blonde / Thievery Corporation
10	The Only Living Boy In New York / Simon & Garfunkel
11	Such Great Heights / Iron and Wine
12	Let Go / Frou Frou
13	Winding Road / Bonnie Somerville

Barnes & Noble

As natives know, New Jersey is nearly synonymous with ennui. Fittingly for this film about arrested development and the anodyne comforts of returning home, the soundtrack to Garden State features a raft of easy listening for the late-20s set. As Wes Anderson's done with Rushmore and The Royal Tennenbaums, Zach Braff, star of NBC's Scrubs, puts a personal stamp on the music that powers his debut feature. With a wide range of sources that foster a single-minded mood, Garden State, like the best of soundtracks, plays more like a mix-tape from a music-obsessed friend. The confessional songs, close-miked guitars, and retro keys encourage attentive, contemplative listening, and each theme seems to add to Braff's story. Unlike Anderson, Braff's no rock archeologist. Simon & Garfunkel and Nick Drake are as old-school as he gets; like most Garden State guys, he draws inspiration from the likes of Coldplay and the Shins ("Don't Panic" opened Parachutes so well that Braff uses it to open his soundtrack, too). The jangle-and-plaint alternates with more moody grooves: Zero 7, the British Air analogue, provide tunefully mellow soul-tronica, while Thievery Corporation contribute sitar-inflected hip-hop. Indie songwriter Sam Beam, a.k.a. Iron and Wine, can be counted on for an intimate, breathy acoustic number such as "Such Great Heights," the perfect foil for the anesthetized character Braff plays in the film. Sensitive, searching filmgoers will likewise find that Garden State fits them to a tee. Mark Schwartz

All Music Guide

The soundtrack to Zach Braff's Garden State is nearly as much of a piece with the film as the similarly sweet, quirky combinations of sound and vision in Wes Anderson's films and soundtracks. Garden State, however, is more modern in its outlook and more emotionally direct, with a mixtape earnestness belied by using not one but two songs from the Shins' Oh, Inverted World. "New Slang" is an obvious choice, as the song just seems to grow in stature as time passes, but "Caring Is Creepy," Oh, Inverted World's vulnerable, ever-so-slightly unhinged opening track, is not, and adds to the personal, diary-like feel of the album. The bright poignancy of the Shins' tracks stands out even more among the low-key melancholy of songs like Coldplay's "Don't Panic," Remy Zero's "Fair," and Colin Hay's "I Just Don't Think I'll Ever Get Over You." The inclusion of Hay's track, Bonnie Somerville's "Winding Road," and the Cary Brothers' "Blue Eyes" shows that Garden State doesn't go for the hipster, too-cool-for-school poses that one might expect from the soundtrack of a hot indie movie, even with the inclusion of Iron & Wine's cover of the Postal Service's "Such Great Heights." Still, there's something of a collegiate feel to the soundtrack, especially with the re-rediscovery of Nick Drake ("One of These Things First") and Simon & Garfunkel ("The Only Living Boy in New York") as well as the tentative forays into electronica and trip-hop like Zero 7's "In the Waiting Line," Frou Frou's "Let Go," and Thievery Corporation's "Lebanese Blonde." Perhaps this collegiate feel comes from the fact that those years are often the time when many people are the most ready and willing to explore music that is new to them (but not necessarily new), but, as the success of Garden State's soundtrack shows, any time can be the right time. Heather Phares