The soundtrack details have already been revealed, but we just received the new album, produced by Godrich (Beck, Air, Radiohead) and featuring original songs by Beck, Broken Social Scene and Metric and it’s so damn good, we thought we’d do a track by track review and breakdown for the music heads out there. Presumably you’ll get to hear some of this very soon — the soundtrack comes out on August 10, three days before the film — but in the meantime, here’s our take (audio links in the song titles where available).
Note, ‘SPVSTW’ creator/illustrator/writer Bryan Lee O’Malley created an index at the end of several ‘Scott Pilgrim’ novels with a suggested soundtrack listening. Six of those songs are included here by Plumtree, Beechwood Sparks, Broken Social Scene, The Bluetones, Frank Black, and The Rolling Stones. How these songs already jive with Edgar Wright’s taste is a little uncanny.
1. Sex Bob-Omb — “We Are Sex Bob-Omb” — Obviously this is written by Beck and is something like, “Thunder Peel” from Stereopathetic Soulmanure, only on amphetamines, and much faster. Opening with Kim Pine (Alison Pill) yelling, “We Are Sex Bob-Omb, 1 2, 3 4!” this track is raw, down and dirty and sung by Mark Webber who portrays the band’s singer/guitarist Stephen Stills in the movie (there’s a lot of CSNY references in the graphic novel). Note: all the background vocals on all Sex Bob-Omb songs are sung by Michael Cera and Pill as well.
2. Plumtree — “Scott Pilgrim” — “I’ve liked you for a thousand years, a thousand years!” Obviously this unrequited love song already exists and has already been heard, but it was a vinyl-only-release and even then it’s still pretty obscure by today’s standards. Without Plumtree’s grunge-bubblegum pop song “Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World” — the comic books takes its name from the song — might not even exist. Those who adore the graphic novels should thank these Canadian girls (where are they now? this band is long defunct) for giving Bryan Lee O’Malley a spark of inspiration. It’s nice to see this cute little East-Coast Canadian band get their due even if it’s way after the fact.
3. Frank Black — “I Heard Ramona” — Another song that already is out there and its referenced in the graphic novels which is part of the reason Edgar Wright put it in the film (other than the obvious title tie in with the lead character Ramona Flowers). It’s part of the immediate post-Pixies Black era of songwriting (the 1993 album Frank Black) when people actually closely paid attention to the idiosyncratic singer, and for good reason. It’s a great song.
4. Beachwood Sparks — “By Your Side” — From the 2001 album, Once We Were Trees, the track is actually a cover of a Sade song believe it or not, but of course filtered through the pastoral and lush lens of this L.A. based indie-folk rock band. This atmospheric, harmonica-laden version enjoyed some relative success on the U.K. charts back in the early aughts, so it’s fitting it would catch the ear of an English filmmaker. More importantly it has that wistful and bittersweet feeling that the “Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World” soundtrack (and presumably film) seems to be chasing in its introspective moments.
5. Black Lips! — “O Katrina!” — Atlanta, Georgia-based “flower-punk” band deliver this Nuggets-like slice of garage rock and if you’d never heard it before you’d swear it was recorded in the mid 1960s its that genuine sounding.
6. Crash and the Boys — “I’m So Sad, So Very, Very, Sad” — Actor Erik Knudsen “sings”on this track, but it’s all of :13 seconds long. “Written” by Broken Social Scene, it’s a essentially a quick noise blast and as they recently said, it’s influenced by the quick blast beat attack of Napalm Death or even skate thrash outfit D.R.I.
7. Crash and the Boys — “We Hate You Please Die” — At :58 seconds, this song is epically long compared to the last track and it’s actually very much a “song,” with verse and choruses. You can totally picture Broken Social Scene’s Kevin Drew belting this one out (it’s perhaps slightly reminiscent of “Major Label Debut,” but just more thrash metal) but Erik Knudsen should seriously consider a side career fronting a punk rock band cause his vocals are aces.
8. Sex Bob-Omb — “Garbage Truck” — “I’ll be your garbage man, I’ll take out your junk and crush it down.” goes this simple, mid-tempo stompy punk-fuzz number. Again, like all the Sex Bob-Omb tracks, it’s penned by Beck and sung by Mark Webber. The song sounds like it was written in about three minutes — but in a good way, the tossed off nature of the tracks definitely works.
9. T. Rex — “Teenage Dream” — If you’re a fan of Edgar Wright or his Twitter, you know the filmmaker is a big fan of glam rock and Marc Bolan — he also used T.Rex, and Sweet in “Hot Fuzz” — so it’s no surprise that this dreamy, opulent and string-laden track is on the soundtrack. We’re very curious to see how this one is used in the film, but we’re betting its something very romantic and in slow motion.
10. The Bluetones — “Sleazy Bed Track” — The kind of fun thing about this film and soundtrack is that you get a British perspective on a graphic novel written by a Canadian who now lives in the U.S., got that? Not that many American audiences will probably have heard this plaintive 1998 single by this once-buzzed about U.K Brit-pop band (in typical hyperbole the NME slobbered all over this band back in the day and called them the next big thing, but they failed to translate over seas). This ballad isn’t particularly sleazy (more sad, unrequited love, really) and if it’s not used in a bed scene we’ll eat our shoe. Extra credit: Wright directed some of their videos back in the day including this one for “After Hours.”Wright actually started working on ‘Scott Pilgrim’ before Volume 2 even came out and compared notes with O’ Malley which helped the Bluetones and Frank Black make their way into the comics’ playlists.
11. Blood Red Shoes — “It’s Getting Boring By The Sea” — This nervy, two-piece, post-punk band from Brighton, England and this spunky track has the exact energy you might expect from this film centering on A.D.D-addled teens (and the track has featured in several of the trailers, including this one). Is this featured during a fight scene or a chase sequence? Would be pretty perfect, we’d imagine. This track is very English (Steven Ansell, interestingly enough has a similar vocal delivery to that of beloved, but defunct fierce British rockers Mclusky), but it’s also pretty awesome.
12. Metric — “Black Sheep” — There’s been a b-side going around of this one for some time, but Metric re-recorded this version for the ‘Scott Pilgrim’ soundtrack and it admittedly sound far superior to the version out there. It’s the song that’s played by The Clash at Demonhead in the film, the band led by Scott’s ex-girlfriend Envy Adams (who’ll be played by Brie Larson, with ex-“Superman” Brandon Routh playing the band’s psychic/vegan bassist, Todd Ingram). The fun twist is that in the film, Brie Larson’s vocals are actually used. Wonder if they’ll ever release that version?
13. Sex Bob-Omb — “Threshold” — “We’re Sex Bob-Omb and we’re here to make you think about death and get sad and stuff!’ yells Michael Cera’s Scott Pilgrim at the top of this cut. This is the song with the fuzz rock guitar that opens up the first “Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World” trailer that got everyone very excited. Like the other Beck-penned Sex Bob-Omb songs, Mark Webber sings the track and it’s a fuzzed-out, wobbly punk rock track all of 1:47 long. Great simple chorus and the feedback touches are nice. Probably the best Beck written Sex Bob-Omb track of the bunch.
14. Broken Social Scene — “Anthems For A Seventeen Year Old Girl” — You should know this song already featuring Emily Haines from Metric on vocals, and if you don’t, well you’re missing out. It’s genuinely a modern classic and cinematic grandeur makes us drool of its possibilities in the film.
15. The Rolling Stones — “Under My Thumb” — You’ve clearly heard this song before, otherwise you probably have problems. To us it sounds like a good montage song with Michael Cera forlornly looking on at Mary Elizabeth Winstead, either that or it’s a walking scene, as it really has that walk and talk rhythm. But actually, we’re told that it fits well to Gideon Graves’ (Jason Schwartzman) entrance. Coincidentally enough it’s Edgar Wright’s favorite Stones track.
16. Beck — “Ramona (Acoustic Version)” — You’ve presumably heard Beck’s folky, stripped down album One Foot In The Grave where he pounds out acoustic tracks on a beat up balsam wood guitar (and the occasional fuzzed-out track not un-reminiscent of Sex Bob-Omb songs). This sounds like a outtake straight from that album. It’s apparently a first take recording too.
17. Beck — “Ramona” — This is what we’ll call the heavenly orchestral version and it’s the second track featured in the original trailer which we said sounded reminiscent of an Air track, and that’s cause it definitely does (remember Beck’s collaboration with the French duo on the track “Vagabond“?). The gorgeous string arrangements are provided by Beck’s dad David Campbell. It’s a sweet, lovelorn floaty track that just begs for slow-motion and or having your heart crushed by the girl that just doesn’t love you back. The ghostly background vocals are kind of amazing and it’s not unlike something featured on Sea Change or Mutations. This is really the rosetta stone/ piece de resistance of the soundtrack.
18. Sex Bob-Omb — “Summertime” — At this point, it’s pretty much confirmed that Wright choosing Beck for the Sex Bob-Omb tracks is a very inspired choice. The songs are catchy, punky, simple, just pretty much perfect from what you expected from this cow-punk band when you first “heard” them in the graphic novel. Note, no Beck vocals are included in these versions, but Mark Webber does a great job of delivering swagger and bravado to the songs. They’re also sloppy and imperfect in the way you’d expect this unpolished band to be.
19. Brian LeBarton — “Threshold (8 Bit)” — So remember “Threshold” the fast, fuzzed-out track you heard in the original trailer? Well, “Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World” does have myriad video game aesthetics and connections, so it’s pretty apropos that electronic musician/Beck collaborator Brian LeBarton wrote an 8-bit Nintendo-like version. It’s bloopy, bleepy and perfectly lo-fi video-game-y.
We’ve been told that a second digital-only score disc is coming with the actual scored penned by producer Nigel Godrich (with help from friends like Broken Social Scene’s Brendan Canning and Kevin Drew to play on the tracks) and we’re honestly super excited for that companion disc as well. We know that Kid Koala, Dan The Automator and Cornelius wrote some score material as well that we presume will be on this bonus disc. The score also awesomely features two members of Supergrass on backing vocals for a cover of music from video game Legend of Zelda.
Lastly, we’re told that songs included in the film that are not on the soundtrack are The Flying Burrito Brothers’ “For Ramona,” “Churches Under The Stairs” by aforementioned BSS member Brendan Canning, Holy Fuck’s “Latin America,” Death From Above 1979’s “Romantic Rights (the Erol Alkan’s Love From Below Re-edit)” and a quick second of a Queen track that you’ll have to try and spot.