SOUNDTRACKS

I avoided "Quicksilver" (subtext: bikin' Bacon bites big time); Lorca And The Outlaws avoided me, or at least any of the theaters near me. Both films did share what would appear to be a bit of good fortune: acquiring the services of Tony BANKS to score the music. Following the success of 1983's GENESIS, one can picture the movie moguls approaching BANKS with a desire to write film music like "that Mama song" or "the one where Phil sings 'all I needed is radio'" (yes, sic). At least I hope that's what they asked for, since that's what they got. BANKS and a trio of vocal collaborators teamed up for actual songs (the inevitable "single" actually fell to Roger Daltrey on "Quicksilver"), which is "Soundtracks" ' real attraction.

A project with FISH (hooray!) falls short of expectations on "Short Cut To Somewhere," largely because of dated synthesizers and artificially contrived drama that stink of the '80s. (Pockets of the same stale parfum waft throughout the "Quicksilver Suite", with a minor variation of "Mama" in the middle.) "You Call This Victory" features Jim Diamond, who plays Tim Finn to BANKS' Jeff Lynne, eliciting all manner of hand-wringing heartache on the line "You call this justice when without here there's no sun", confirming for many the inextricable link between sunlight and justice. "Lion of Symmetry" is the best of the batch, as if Siouxsie Sioux rewrote the lyrics to "Turn It On Again" with passion. The closing "Redwing Suite" is pretty much a series of musical placeholders, no better or more memorable than the instrumental snippets from "A Curious Feeling". So, is "Soundtracks" the bastard child in the BANKS discography? To quote the immortal Fred Flinstone (or, more precisely, Fred's alien clone): "Yes yes yes."