At PopWatch, Gary Susman passes along the rumor that The Kinks may be reforming for a reunion tour. “Which is cool, because there’s such a groundswell of demand to see the Davies brothers joined onstage, for the first time since 1969, by drummer Mick Avory and bassist Pete Quaife,” Sussman writes. “Well, okay, not really…”

This may seem like a tangent, but bear with me: I spent some time with my 20 year-old sister and her friends over the holiday, and their iPods are full of songs by bands from waaayyyy before their time–bands like The Kinks, New Order, Joy Division–but only the tracks that have been used in semi-recent, semi-indie movies, like The Darjeeling Limited, Marie Antoinette and Control.  I was in the car with two of these kids, and when “You’re Gonna Miss Me” by The 13th Floor Elevators came on someone’s iPod, I glanced down and saw that the album it came from was the High Fidelity soundtrack.

iTunes may have killed off both the album and the single by obliterating any meaningful difference between the two, but it has also come a long way towards erasing the distinction between new releases and catalogue titles. When someone my sister’s age goes to see The Darjeeling Limited and falls in love with a Kinks song, she doesn’t care that the song is “old”, because it’s totally new to her. The easily mockable nostalgia that infuses the films of Wes Anderson or Sofia Coppola has the added benefit of reclaiming good music, in a nostalgia-free way, for a younger generation. And whether it’s because of short attention spans, the decline of cinephilia, or some factor that I’m way too old and uncool to pick up on, the music ends up being a more important part of their lives than the movie that introduced them to it.

So, in a round about way, are movies with impeccable hipster soundtracks essentially ensuring a post-Baby Boomer audience for reunion tours?