Forget the forced quirkiness, empty-headed philosophizing, and bad dancing—Zach Braff’s 2004 film Garden State is essentially about the complications of growing up, which partially explains why it's endured as a pop cultural reference point. Granted, the film has aged poorly, and its weaknesses—obvious visual framing, a reliance on juvenalia for comedic effect, a bizarre focus on discouraging the use of antidepressants for the mentally ill—are present and plentiful. But Garden State’s appeal was and still is inherent to anyone who’s experienced or been able to recognize the emotional selfishness that comes with feeling adrift in your mid-to-late twenties. Even if the film failed to truly change viewers’ lives, at the least it convinced them of the power of large-sized headphones.

Indeed, Garden State’s legacy in the decade since it hit theatres isn't really about the film; it's become a pop culture totem, especially its Grammy-winning, platinum-selling soundtrack. Braff described it at the time as “a mix CD with all of the music that I felt was scoring my life” while he worked on the film's screenplay, but few mix CDs have such an impact on the zeitgeist. It's often and incorrectly cited as the first time the Shins were exposed to mainstream culture—you have a different, more insidious corporate entity to thank for that eventuality—but the Garden State soundtrack's tasteful folk-pop, unassuming electronica, and occasional old classic or two marks the point in the last decade when the term “indie” became more associated with how music sounds than the ethos behind how music’s made. Whether or not you’ve followed Imogen Heap’s solo career since, its existence is partially owed to Garden State; the set is responsible for much of the music you hear in Starbucks, as well as much of the music you can purchase at Starbucks.

A cultural event that arguably sowed the seeds for the musical conservatism infecting present-day mainstream rock, Garden State is mentioned with ire as much as it is with nostalgic fondness; in other words, it provokes strong feelings. So it’s understandable that, 10 years later and without much else since to lean on in terms of artistic credibility, Braff’s returned to the shallow well with Wish I Was Here, his second directorial effort. Frequently billed as Garden State’s “spiritual sequel” and sharing little with its predecessor beyond a strongly unlikable protagonist and the ever-present spectre of death, Wish I Was Here is a sometimes-bland, sometimes-intolerable mix of tired platitudes, overbearing religious themes, casual racism, and sappy sentimentality that, quality-wise, makes Garden State look like The Graduate by comparison.

Which is fine. Braff’s most vaunted position in pop culture circa 2014 isn’t as the actor who played the annoying guy on the TV show your college roommates watched all the time, or as a fervent Redditor who once assisted in helping someone propose to their girlfriend online, or as a distant blood relative to Mitt Romney. Arguably, he’s not even most known as the guy who directed Garden State—he’s the guy who put together the Garden State soundtrack, and so the question surrounding Wish I Was Here is a strange one that most films aren’t subject to: What does it sound like? Braff himself is undoubtedly aware of this expectation, going as far as to promise an early stream of the soundtrack to those who backed the film’s funding on Kickstarter.

Such an incentive would have been unimaginably useless in Garden State’s case, as the film’s soundtrack was largely compiled of tunes that existed before its release; that’s not the case for Wish I Was Here, which features new songs written specifically for the film from the Shins, Bon Iver, and most curiously, a collaboration between Cat Power and Coldplay. With the exception of Bon Iver (whose “Holocene” is also featured here, almost to the point of self-parody), these acts were active concerns circa Garden State—for Coldplay and the Shins, it’s their second trip soundtracking Braff’s explicitly caucasian middle-class take on generational malaise—and their presence alone was practically preordained. The music on the Garden State soundtrack still sounds unmistakably like 2004, and Wish I Was Here follows suit; if we’re being charitable, the dated musical timeline it establishes plays like an alternate-universe pop cultural atmosphere that ground to a halt shortly after the release of Bon Iver’s 2009 EP Blood Bank—a scenario where Coldplay never went EDM, Cat Power never worked with a French house duo, Justin Vernon never collaborated with Kanye West, and (one can dream) Broken Bells never happened.

Banjos, acoustic guitars, and unbearable expressions of earnestness abound; Paul Simon’s “The Obvious Child” is included, because of course it is. Gary Jules, an also-ran singer/songwriter whose maudlin cover of Tears for Fears’ “Mad World” went viral after being featured in the closing moments of the 2001 sci-fi-cum-coming of age film Donnie Darko and more or less hasn’t been heard from since, shows up with the muddy, unlistenable “Broke Window”, taken from that year’s Trading Snakeoil for Wolftickets; elsewhere, alt-rock casualties Jump Little Children, who broke up nearly a decade ago, are featured with the impossibly plastic-sounding “Mexico”, a California-namechecking song that elevates Phantom Planet to Randy Newman status. Perhaps the strongest song featured on the soundtrack is Badly Drawn Boy’s contemplative “The Shining”—taken from an album which first saw release nearly 15 years ago, cementing the soundtrack’s functionality as a nostalgia trip that registers on the level of seeing a Kerry/Edwards bumper sticker on a car windshield.

As for the new stuff: Bon Iver contribute “Heavenly Father”, a watery, over-processed slice of electro-folk that was perfected on the project’s self-titled 2011 LP and comes across as an unwanted leftover from those sessions. The film’s corresponding title track carries writing credits from Coldplay and features Cat Power’s Chan Marshall singing lead, and “Wish I Was Here”’s melodic structure certainly sounds like Coldplay, a subdued, unfussy version of the weirdest mega-band in the world’s skyscraping tendencies. But Marshall’s flat, unaffecting vocal take, along with the dull arrangement, makes for a boring ballad that outpaces anything on Coldplay’s recent misfire Ghost Stories in terms of tedium. In a sense, “Wish I Was Here” a perfect representation of the film and, by extension, Braff’s overall preferred aesthetic—moderately palatable, harmless, uninteresting, and ultimately less forgettable than you’d want it to be.

Fittingly, the sole new contribution that doesn’t scan as a failure comes from the Shins, a project that will probably never be able to escape the spectre of Garden State as long as there’s people out there who will marvel over the dirt in their fries. Shins bandleader James Mercer has, against all odds, spent the last decade quietly establishing himself as one of North America’s finest songwriters, turning out pretty-sounding songs that sound effortless in their simplicity, and “So Now What” is the latest example of him flexing his inimitable talent. It’s not the best Shins song, nor would any fan likely include it in a “Best of” compilation for the band, but it’s a better song than Braff’s film deserves, as Mercer’s voice gorgeously crests on a bed of reverb and synthetic strings.

The Shins’ last album from 2012, Port of Morrow, found Mercer taking the cheesier sounds of rock music’s past and spinning gold out of them; the floaty textures of “So Now What”, on the other hand, sounds undeniably current, standing in opposition to the short-term retro malaise that Wish I Was Here’s soundtrack ultimately and greatly suffers from. Whether or not Braff was intending to capture a cultural moment with Garden State’s soundtrack, that’s exactly what he did; this time around, the moment eludes him, making his previous success as a musical tastemaker seem more than ever like a happy accident. Next time—if, God help us, Hollywood and the internet band together again and decide to give this guy another chance—he might be better off exploring the infinite abyss for inspiration.