To set the tone for his latest directorial effort, “Away We Go,” Sam Mendes turned to Scottish folkie Alexi Murdoch for an acoustic soundtrack that’s either appropriately melancholy or the world’s longest emo song. Perhaps it’s fitting that as expectant couple Burt and Verona (John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph) visits different households across the country and judges them variously unsuitable in which to raise a child, the sonic scenery never changes for the audience.

Murdoch has cultivated a certain following, and it’s not his fault that at a critical moment in the film he’s bumped from his place by a much older song which also appears on the soundtrack. It’s not even new to soundtracks, popping up within the sonic collage of Stephen Frears’ “High Fidelity”; but whether audience members are familiar with the Velvet Underground or not, they won’t be able to forget the Montreal bar scene featuring “Oh, Sweet Nuthin’”. It’s the truest scene of a movie which punches its ticket on a falsehood; it’s the moment where Burt and Verona finally hit something about which they can’t just make a sheepish joke.

“Away We Go” is just the latest indie soundtrack to shoot itself in the foot this way, by ribboning its scenes with forgettable folk tunes and then pulling from the back catalog when it needs to pack a real emotional punch. Anyone else want Juno to stay in that dark room listening to “All The Young Dudes” instead of jamming brainlessly to The Moldy Peaches? On the international tip, Best Foreign Film nominee “Waltz With Bashir” may as well not have a soundtrack at all besides its electrifying Zeev Tene tune “Beirut,” an Israeli cover of the 1994 Cake song “I Bombed Korea.” The device is even trickling down to less well regarded films; the otherwise forgettable Daniel Craig drama “Flashbacks of a Fool” needs Roxy Music’s “If There Is Something” so badly, its ending features a character reading its lyrics in a note from another character and then crying meaningfully. The movie is unsalvageable, but somewhere a lovelorn 12-year-old bought “If There Is Something” from iTunes and cried herself to sleep.

This scrapbook approach may operate on the individual level, as well as introducing a new generation to Lou Reed, but it devalues the work of composers who actually take the time to put together soundtracks that don’t need the baggage of a classic hit to complete themselves emotionally. Of all the imitators Zach Braff has wrought upon the modern indie soundtrack, at least his own “Garden State” deep cut, Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Only Living Boy In New York,” seamlessly integrates with the Zero 7, Frou Frou and the Shins that cover more meaningful moments. Thomas Newman’s soundtrack for “Wall*E” incorporates show tunes, Peter Gabriel and “La vie en rose” without losing step; more recently, Nathan Johnson’s whimsical Brionesque work on brother Rian’s con man caper “The Brothers Bloom” gently tugs its themes along without ever becoming intrusive. A memorable original tune couldn’t have pushed the bewildered parents-to-be of “Away We Go” into a revelation that rang true — and more’s the pity — but Mendes should have known better than to mix real and canned emotions in the same dish.