The entire soundtrack of ‘Scott Pilgrim vs. the world’, which was released yesterday, can be streamed at Spinner and the list of the artists who have participated is impressive: beside Beck and Broken Social scene, there are also Frank Black, T. Rex, The Rolling Stones, The Black Lips, Metric as well as Plumtree’s ‘Scott Pilgrim’, the song which originally inspired Bryan Lee O’Malley to create the character and comic book series.
The songs written by Beck for the fictional band Sex Bob-Omb with bassist Michael Cera are diverse with the Ramonish ‘We are Sex Bob-omb’, the early-Beck-like monotonous ironic blues ‘Garbage Truck’, and the already mentioned garage punk ‘Summertime’.
But it is the song ‘Ramona’ which I bet will please most of Beck’s fans, a track that could be a let over from ‘Sea Change’, with the same kind of string arrangements than on ‘Lonesome tears’ or ‘Sunday Sun’.
Since the girl of Scott Pilgrim’s dreams is named Ramona Flowers, there is another Ramona song in the soundtrack, ‘I heard Ramona sing’ by Frank Black, an older track and a sort of tribute to the Ramones.
Broken Social Scene wrote the songs for the other band Crash and the Boys, and the band Metric is the inspiration for the other band Clash at Demonhead, there are actually 4 fake bands in this movie!
Adapted from the comic book of the same name, this film does not seem to take himself too seriously, and Beck recently said to the LATimes he was looking at frames from the comic book when writing the songs. Some of the lyrics are even directly taken from some book of the series, and Edgar Wright, the director, said that he added comic-book effects to every hit on the drum or strike of a guitar to make it ‘look like a 14-year-old’s idea of a rock band’, and to visualize the sound as a ‘school-book doodle’
Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World Soundtrack Tracklist:
01. SEX BOB-OMB (Beck): “We Are SEX BOB-OMB”
02. Plumtree: “Scott Pilgrim”
03. Frank Black: “I Heard Ramona Sing”
04. Beachwood Sparks: “By Your Side”
05. Black Lips: “O Katrina!”
06. Crash and the Boys (Broken Social Scene): “I’m So Sad, So Very, Very Sad”
07. Crash and the Boys (Broken Social Scene): “We Hate You Please Die”
08. SEX BOB-OMB (Beck): “Garbage Truck”
09. T. Rex: “Teenage Dream”
10. The Bluetones: “Sleazy Bed Track”
11. Blood Red Shoes: “It’s Getting Boring by the Sea”
12. Metric: “Black Sheep”
13. SEX BOB-OMB (Beck): “Threshold”
14. Broken Social Scene: “Anthems for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl”
15. The Rolling Stones: “Under My Thumb”
16. Beck: “Ramona (Acoustic)”
17. Beck: “Ramona”
18. SEX BOB-OMB (Beck): “Summertime”
19. Brian LeBarton: “Threshold 8 Bit”
There is also another album with the score of the movie by Radiohead-Beck producer Nigel Godrich, who is the soundtrack’s executive producer.
The movie is out today, but the soundtrack may be the best thing about it.