Following up the popular 2005 film from director Ken Kwapis, which transferred Ann Brashares’ best-selling young adult series of books to the big screen, Blake Lively, Alexis Bledel, America Ferrera, and Amber Tamblyn reunited once again in this year’s delightful sequel, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2.   

Set during another fateful summer, we catch up with The Sisterhood’s foursome after their first year of college. We find them dealing with that instantly relatable feeling of trying to reconcile the concerns and friendships of their youth with their new busy lives studying and living in various places. As those who are of a certain age are readily aware, it’s a tough transitional time where friendships are put to the test, but the girls all continue loyally shipping the worn pair of blue jeans to each other in the hopes they will slide not only into the denim but the miraculous good fortune the jeans are purported to inspire.   

While cinematically, the film’s screenwriter Elizabeth Chandler had her work cut out for her, trying to piece together the plot from Brashares’ three sequels to her original phenomenally popular original, director Sanaa Hamri took on double duty by not only helming the film but also becoming an executive producer of the film’s soundtrack. 

Following up the terrific original soundtrack, Hamri and the album’s co-producers Broderick Johnson and Andrew A. Kosove along with music supervisor Julia Michels had their first enormous streak of luck when the talented Michelle Branch “reached out to [them] early in the process as she was interested in writing a song,” for the film.  As the press release continues, Branch was so inspired from viewing an early cut of the film that the Grammy Award winner penned the song, “Together,” which would end up playing during the film’s final credits.  Although its lyrics seem a bit too on-the-nose, Branch channels the extraordinary bond the young women share in her ode to friendship which appears as the second track on the album, following up Eric Hutchinson’s addictive, lyrically infectious up-tempo opener “Rock & Roll.”  

With a lineup as diverse as the four girls themselves, no musical genre is left unexplored as the album offers selections for those who are a little bit rock or a little bit country and everything in between, to misquote the old Osmond number.  Making the most out of working within Warner Brothers for both the film and the soundtrack, excellent contributions from those signed onto the label are included but instead of flowing together with ease, at times, the soundtrack encounters a few rough patches in trying to serve up something for everyone, namely with the inclusion of James Otto’s twangy “Sunset Man,” which sounds like it would’ve been much more at home on the soundtrack to Flicka rather than in this contemporary film that’s  set primarily in the east-coast of the United States.