Soundtrack/various artists

Director Terry Zwigoff, who adapted Daniel Clowes’ superb serial graphic novel Ghost World from his comic-book series Eightball to film, sometimes plays bass in Robert Crumb’s Cheap Suit Serenaders; he also shot the documentary Crumb. The soundtrack CD opens with a zany 1965 Indian film tune, swerves through scratchy acoustic blues, multiple covers by a supper-club jazz combo, several numbers by a Depression-era Latin bandleader, a blues-rock cover and a fingerstyle guitar rag before Zwigoff tacks on six obscure blues sides from his 78 collection. The problem is, this disc evokes Crumb much more than Clowes. The cartoonists do share similarities; if Crumb’s bulbous imagery and razor wit eviscerated ’60s/’70s counterculture, Clowes’ sharper, more angular style nailed the more rootless pop culture of the mid-’90s. This might make a dandy Crumb 2 soundtrack, but Clowes it ain’t. And no Neil Smythe?