Throughout our track-by-track review, when talking about the songs by Sex Bob-Omb, the fictional band fronted by Scott Pilgrim in the forthcoming “Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World” we noted the song’s lo-fi, grimy, punk aesthetic. Well it appears that Beck, tapped to write the tunes that the band would perform in the film, had a great reference point to work from.
Speaking with actor Michael Cera and comic writer Bryan O’Malley, the LA Times reports that, initially, O’Malley was championing Matador Records’ Midwest punkers Times New Viking to write the songs for Sex Bob-Omb. “We wanted them to sound like a garage band,” O’Malley said. “We wanted them to sound rough and really distorted. There’s this band called Times New Viking who had just released an album, and I was like, ‘These guys are perfect.'”
However, director Edgar Wright wasn’t quite sold on the band as being the right fit. While they certainly met his criteria, they might have just been a touch too extreme for the film. “I like Times New Viking,” Wright said, and “the link between Guitar Wolf and Times New Viking is that they’re mastered too loud. They’re the only two bands I can think of in my iTunes like that. Guitar Wolf’s ‘Jet Generation’ has a sticker on the back that says it has been mastered too loud and it shouldn’t be played at full volume. Times New Viking is the same. They’re designed to screw up a playlist.” And screwing up a playlist probably isn’t what you want when prepping an indie rock fan’s dream soundtrack.
However, once Beck came on board he seemed to have a psychic ability to know exactly what what O’Malley was looking for, “So we start down with Beck, and the first thing he said was, ‘I think they should sound like Times New Viking.’ So Beck totally understood what we were going for. Edgar and I just kind of looked at each other,” said O’Malley. Eerie.
And really, Beck is the right choice. While Guitar Wolf and Times New Viking are both great bands, Beck has an uncanny knack for writing great hooks and delivering them even in the lowest of lo-fi, garage aesthetics. We think Beck finds the right balance between meeting the grungy authenticity of a garage band while still operating in a space where he needs to deliver tunes that won’t blow the speakers in multiplexes around the country. As noted in our soundtrack review, the tunes are “catchy, punky, simple,” ” raw, down and dirty” and “fuzzed-out, wobbly punk rock.” In short, Beck delivers and will quickly quell any doubts he wasn’t the right guy for the job.
And certainly, he gave Wright and O’Malley plenty of material to choose from. “Beck writes a dozen songs in one day,” O’Malley said. “So that’s what [Beck and Nigel Godrich] did. They wrote about 21 songs, and we picked the ones we liked. That whole thing was done in one day.” Only four ended up on the soundtrack, and they are the versions sung by the cast members, but whether or not the remaining tracks and/or the Beck sung renditions find a release remains to be seen, but we would love to hear it.
Take a listen to Guitar Wolf and Times New Viking below to get an idea of the inspiration point for Beck.And after that hit theaters on August 13th to hear how Sex Bob-Omb rocks out.
Guitar Wolf “Jet Generation”
Times New Viking “Born Again Revisited”
BTW, you can hear a bit of ‘Scott Pilgrim’ score cue called “Death To All Hipsters'” by Beck & soundtrack producer/score composer Nigel Godrich. It’s very bleeptastic.