he decline in popularity of the movie soundtrack seems to be one of the most overlooked consequences of the MP3 era. In their golden age, great soundtracks made films like American Graffiti, The Harder They Come, and Saturday Night Fever into iconic pictures. And they transformed films like Flashdance, The Bodyguard, and Dirty Dancing into your sister’s favorite movies, and single handedly kept Kenny Loggins off food stamps. Even as recently as ten years ago, you couldn’t go anywhere without somebody’s mother blasting the soundtrack to Titanic as she passed by your neighborhood elementary school.

Of course, times have changed. Now anyone with access to the IMDB can download the best songs from their favorite summer movies and burn them into an all-encompassing mega-soundtrack. So while film and TV soundtracks used to account for a solid percentage of overall music sales, they’ve all but been banished to the relative desolateness of digital downloading sites. The only reprieve from this downward trend seems to be either to A) get an immensely popular musician to record a soundtrack-exclusive hit, a la Eminem and 8 Mile, or to B) integrate contemporary music heavily into a popular cult film, an approach which won Zach Braff a Grammy two years ago.

So whenever a film soundtrack comes around that actually functions effectively away from its parent movie, it makes the iPod-ization of the product all the more lamentable. One such soundtrack, for last year’s La Mujer de Mi Hermano, was a dynamic sampler of Spanish language alternative music, a sort of kindred spirit to Braff’s Garden State compilation. And although that disc counted Andrea Echeverri, Mexican Institute of Sound, and the Pinker Tones amongst its line-up, the undisputed jewel of the disc was “Don’t Let Go,” by the Bronx’s Pacha Massive.

A soulful burst of dub-inspired Latin funk, “Don’t Let Go” is as cool as a strawberry margarita with sugar on the rim. Buoyed by a light guitar lick and thick bass line, the track finds vocalist Maya and rapper DJ Nova sharing a remarkable chemistry reminiscent of Blue Lines-era Massive Attack. However, while “Don’t Let Go” would lead you to believe that you’d discovered a hip version of Thievery Corporation, the remainder of their debut album, All Good Things, can best be described as the sound of Dido covering the entirety of Lily Allen’s Alright, Still.

In other words, while All Good Things boasts a consistent sound throughout its 15 tracks, it doesn’t maintain your interest for very long. Part of this can be attributed to the album’s prosaic and delicate production, but at times it also seems like the band is void of confidence in its playing. Take the tracks “Prende la Luz” and “Al Ritmo de Pacha,” for example: Each delivers a solid performance from Maya and Nova, but the backing instrumentation is simply too lifeless to really engage the listener. And as much as Pacha Massive wants to showcase the multiculturalism that forms their sound, the production reeks of staid and pedestrian technique. (The principle offender being the cheesy, repetitive keyboard programming that backs virtually every song.)

That isn’t to say the album’s without its highlights. “La Verdolaga” and “Your Love” glide on Caribbean rhythms with a New York tint, and “Pachangueando” is a more than worthy follow-up single to “Don’t Let Go.” Misleadingly lazy and accentuated by a breezy harmonica and dancefloor beat, “Pachangueando” is also the closest thing that fulfills the promise that Pacha Massive exhibited in winning the 2005 Latin Alternative Music Conference Battle of the Bands. Such potential will be squandered however, until this creativity can be sustained long-term. Until then, they’ll just be another group of soundtrack stars.