Gone Missing (Original Soundtrack)

Although Gone Missing is packaged and promoted as a traditional indie pop album, it's actually a cast album from an off-off-Broadway show. Gone Missing is a revue-style series of songs from a show of the same title, constructed by a young theatrical troupe out of a series of filmed and recorded interviews with random New Yorkers on the concept of things that are lost, from memories to people to the black Gucci pump that dominates the album cover art. Lacking the context of a show, the songs on a cast album have to stand on their own merits, and unfortunately, most of the tracks on Gone Missing don't. Too many, especially the group-sung title track and the maudlin ballad "Hide and Seek," sound like third-rate Stephen Sondheim, and the Spanish-language "La Bodega" just sounds like tacky pastiche. On the up side, "I Gave It Away" has a sprightly sunshine pop vibe unexpectedly reminiscent of the Fifth Dimension at their most theatrical, and "Etch A Sketch" is a genuinely pretty, tuneful song about a woman with a mind like a sieve, but by the time those two songs come around, late in the show's last half, it's a classic case of too little too late.