The soundtrack for director Lasse Hallstrom's film adaptation of The Notebook-scribe Nicholas Sparks' romantic drama/thriller Safe Haven features 11 appropriately amorous, sentimental, bittersweet, and/or heartbroken songs (most of which are carefully fingerpicked) along with one selection ("Canoeing [Katie and Alex's Theme]") from the original score, which was composed by Deborah Lurie (Mozart and the Whale, Dear John, 9). Opening track "We Both Know," which was written specifically for the film and capably performed by Colbie Caillat and Gavin DeGraw, is a perfectly executed yet ultimately forgettable exercise in country-pop power balladry that aims for the seats, sails on by them, and then just keeps on going, orbiting the "songosphere" (that's where songwriters get all of their stuff) in the hope that some of its parts can one day be refitted into something beautiful and true, or at the very least regionally popular. Elsewhere, two singer/songwriters, Englishman Ben Howard and Irishman Gareth Dunlop, provide the soundtrack with a pair of roguish yet reliably self-reflective numbers in "Keep Your Head Up" and "Wrap Your Arms Around Me," respectively, while Brandi Carlile offers up a lovely pared-down Strings Mix of "Heart's Content" and earthy folk crooner Amos Lee provides the soulful "Violin" from his 2011 LP Mission Bell. ~ James Christopher Monger
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