Various Artists: Wig In A Box: Songs From & Inspired By Hedwig And The Angry Inch

This year saw the release of Die Mommie Die! and Girls Will Be Girls, two perplexingly similar, self-consciously campy, low-budget drag-queen vehicles that mostly aspired to score mean-spirited chuckles at the expense of their loathsome characters. Neither succeeded, but both made John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask's Hedwig And The Angry Inch look like even more of a triumph by comparison. The poignant story of a fading semi-transsexual and her tumultuous relationship with her protégé/usurper, Hedwig similarly boasted a far-fetched premise, an over-the-hill protagonist, and a star in campy drag, but it succeeded in wringing an emotionally resonant, universal love story out of tabloid material, including a botched sex-change operation. The Hedwig appreciation festival continues with Wig In A Box, a charity tribute album benefiting The Hetrick-Martin Institute, which helps gay, bisexual, and transgendered teenagers and young adults. The disc lets an inspired assemblage of alt-rock royalty have a crack at the cult musical's songs, and some of the artists involved are easier to predict than others. It's not surprising, for example, that Rufus Wainwright captures every last bit of drama in "The Origin Of Love" without compromising its innate delicacy. It's a wonderful surprise, however, that They Might Be Giants brings such an adult air of world-weary resignation to a blessedly restrained, wry cover of "The Long Grift." Sleater-Kinney and Fred Schneider prove a surprisingly effective pairing on a shoutalong cover of "Angry Inch," while Frank Black turns "Sugar Daddy" into a sashaying, gender-bending rockabilly rave-up. "The majority of The Polyphonic Spree cite Hedwig And The Angry Inch as a huge inspiration," the album's credits report. There's no word on the minority opinion, but the group does well by the title track, a liberating anthem that combines pathos and bombast as it celebrates show business' gift for allowing misfits and outsiders to re-create themselves however they see fit. Hedwig And The Angry Inch deserves to be the Rocky Horror Picture Show of its generation, and Wig In A Box marks an encouraging step in that direction.