I didn’t mention that Radiohead is all over the A Scanner Darkly soundtrack. Well, their songs are in the film. I don’t know about the actual soundtrack. (Anyone care to explain to me why soundtracks are so often radically different from the music played in the actual film?) But I caught at least two Radiohead tunes (including “The Amazing Sounds of Orgy,” which had me dancing a little jig in my seat … okay, in my head) and “Black Swan,” from The Eraser. (“Black Swan” is predictably my current favorite song off that album; the lyrics seem particularly suited to some of my present life crapola.)
Anyway, if ever there was a band whose sound could transmit tangible alienation and paranoia and the eerie beauty of uncertainty, it’s Radiohead.