The recent addition to our playlist of “Dig, Lazarus, Dig!” by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds got me thinking about the first place I ever heard them — a movie soundtrack — and led me to wondering about that format again for the first time in many years.

Films and film music like The Big Chill and Saturday Night Fever collected the voice[s] of a generation. It begs the question: what speaks to us masses of hipsters, goths, sk8rs, mods and whatnot? What might entertain Gen X and Gen Y as well as our siblings and offspring? What is The Big Chill of alternative, indie, and modern rock?

After the jump let’s survey some contenders, and feel free to comment and suggest:

Repo Man (1984)
[THE CASE FOR:] Six months after the release of baby-boomer reunion flick The Big Chill came its polar opposite — a punk-rock, sci-fi freakout with young Emilio Estevez and Harry Dean Stanton, played to the tune of Iggy Pop, Suicidal Tendencies, and Circle Jerks. [THE CASE AGAINST:] The movie’s a cult classic, its sound urgent and nihilistic, but more than half of the album comes from bands (The Plugz? Burning Sensations?) which didn’t stand the test of time.

Pretty in Pink (1986) and Say Anything (1989)
[FOR:] Released three years apart, these films share themes of teenage angst and acceptance as well as a use of late-period New Wave and nascent “college rock” to forward scenes and storylines. Pink confirmed John Hughes as an affecting voice of mopey youth; Say Anything introduced us to Cameron Crowe’s iconic images and sounds. [AGAINST:] OMD’s The Psychedelic Furs’ “Pretty in Pink” and Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” drown out the remaining star power on their respective albums (including New Order and The Smiths, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Depeche Mode), as if upon hearing those songs you know everything about the movies.

Pump Up the Volume (1990)
[FOR:] Music really starred in this film about free speech manifested through pirate radio. Christian Slater’s reclusive DJ used bracing voices of underground music to help give his high school a collective backbone. Excepting the inclusion of Ivan Neville, from top to bottom (Bad Brains, Peter Murphy, Cowboy Junkies, a Pixies rarity) this may be the first significant all-indie soundtrack. [AGAINST:] Some music from vital scenes (Beastie Boys, Descendents, Leonard Cohen) wasn’t included. Also, it’s not the best movie in the world despite some career-defining work by Slater.

Until the End of the World (1991)
[FOR:] German filmmaker Wim Wenders commands such respect that OMG he reunited Talking Heads and Can for this soundtrack. He also extracted moody performances from heavy hitters like Nick Cave (there’s my first exposure to him), R.E.M., Elvis Costello and T-Bone Burnett. U2’s title track is a different mix than what appears on Achtung Baby. Almost every song a rarity, I argue this is hands-down one of the finest soundtracks ever made… [AGAINST:] …except that it’s for an art-house film nobody admits to having seen. Trust me. I haven’t either.

Singles (1992)
[FOR:] Crowe pulls the curtain back on Seattle’s grunge scene and the influences (lead ‘Mat Paul Westerberg) and sympathizers (Smashing Pumpkins) who inform if not define the “modern rock” sound to this day. Mainstream introductions of bands like Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Mudhoney. [AGAINST:] Even absent Nirvana, some could argue that the Seattle-centric focus was limiting. Just because Heart and Hendrix are from there doesn’t make them indie.

Pulp Fiction (1994)
[FOR:] Quentin Tarantino pretty much exploded the soundtrack genre in the 1990s and on into the 2000s. Just about everyone owns this because the music has as much on-screen personality as any actor in the film. In fact, many films and soundtracks involving Tarantino (True Romance, Jackie Brown, Natural Born Killers) follow suit. [AGAINST:] Let’s just say I’ve acknowledged the elephant in the room. With just one alt-rock act on the record (Urge Overkill) this isn’t really an alt-rock soundtrack.

The Crow (1994)
[FOR:] An exciting, tragic, mythic adaptation of the graphic novel featured music to match the dark atmosphere — Rage Against the Machine, Nine Inch Nails, Rollins Band, Stone Temple Pilots, Violent Femmes. [AGAINST:] Other than the odd no-name act (For Love Not Lisa?) and the forgettable film sequels that followed, there really isn’t much of a case against this.

Empire Records (1995)
[FOR:] This tale of an indie record store taking on a big-box chain featured a few actors who would continue on to greater things — Liv Tyler, Anthony LaPaglia, Renee Zellweger, Debi Mazar. Musically significant was its use of artists from subsequent waves of alternative rock, many straddling fences between indie and major-label ties as well as harder and AAA sounds: The Cranberries, Gin Blossoms, Edwyn Collins, Better Than Ezra and so on. [AGAINST:] A rather forgettable film otherwise.

Trainspotting (1996)
[FOR:] Danny Boyle’s drug-fueled dramedy set atmospheric and musical templates for many British indie films to follow. Its scope is wide, from bitter and raging post-punk and Brit-pop (Elastica, Pulp) to euphoric and pivotal placements of techno (most notably Underworld’s “Born Slippy [Nuxx]”). [AGAINST:] Like Singles, possibly too much of a focus on one region’s music; Iggy Pop and Lou Reed comprise a small non-UK artist contingent.

SubUrbia (1997)
[FOR:] Richard Linklater, who directed the mighty Dazed and Confused and forever changed the lexicon with 1991’s Slacker, directed this pop-star-returns-home vehicle. The soundtrack likewise features indie-rockers all growed up and established now: Sonic Youth, Girls Against Boys, Beck, UNKLE, The Flaming Lips. [AGAINST:] No buzz about the album because there’s little buzz about this film. Despite another young/hot cast (Parker Posey, Giovanni Ribisi, Steve Zahn) it seems a footnote to Linklater’s career.

The Matrix (1999)
[FOR:] Like The Crow before it, this movie’s music accompanied not just Keanu Reeves playing a ghost in the machine but the dark, mysterious, and sometimes angry/violent mood of the film as a whole. Rage Against the Machine repped their rap-punk, Marilyn Manson their industrial screamo. Meat Beat Manifesto and Hive tweaked electro, while Propellerheads and Rob D upgraded it to the “big beat” sound. Deftones and Monster Magnet, meanwhile, gave us straight-up sludgy rock. [AGAINST:] The song selections may have fit the film, but many were not new at the time of the soundtrack’s release; the biggest revelation is that the whole is definitely greater than the sum of its parts. Of course, if you are not a fan of the harsher alt-rock genres represented then you’ll get about as bad a headache as you did watching the two sequels.

High Fidelity (2000)
[FOR:] Like a Tarantino movie, this pulls from sources old and new so it’s like you’re listening to a mixtape put together by one of the film’s lovelorn record-shop employees. What’s different is that the hip factor actually speaks to hipsters who flocked to the flick. From Love and John Wesley Harding to The Beta Band and Royal Trux, it’s a primer course on how to have an epoch-spanning record collection worthy of winning you a soulmate. [AGAINST:] With the exception of Jack Black’s riff on Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get it On,” there’s so much good music referenced in Nick Hornby’s story — both the original British book and the American film — that you wish there was another disc or three.

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