Sex Bob-Omb, You're my Sex Bob-Omb
Soundtracks can be pretty much hit and miss and let's face it, mostly they are a miss. There is something about having a bunch of bands spanning a host of genres that are thrown together in a musical soup, that fail to gel together, coming off like either a mix-tape from an extremely open-minded person, or something that smells of a record label just looking to cash in with en vogue bands – both with little or no relevance to the actual movie. This soundtrack is slightly different insomuch as it is basically Scott Pilgrim director Edgar Wright's mixtape of his youth with added songs that are played by the fictitious bands in the movie.
What we get are bands, or songs influenced by bands, from the mid 1990's, packed with fuzzbox guitars and an Alternative Rock that would've been played on the old MTV show 120 Minutes in a time when Zane Lowe was still listening to these on his Walkman whilst doing his sixth-form college homework. We also have the surprising (and welcomed) additions of The Stones and T-Rex. The former being the slightly less well-known tune of, 'Under My Thumb' which includes what sounds like a glockenspiel as the main melody, whilst the latter is a nice chunk of 70's Glam Rock.
Of the other songs by actual bands, we have the Canadian all-girl band, Plumbtree with the title track, 'Scott Pilgrim'. This is a great song in the vein of Lucious Jackson. Then the familiar voice of Frank Black in, 'I Heard Ramona Sing' that is exactly what you would expect from the big guy, before a surprisingly good cover of Sade's, 'By Your Side' sung by LA band Beachwood Sparks. The musical influence for the movie-made songs is apparent in both, 'O Katrina!' by Black Lips and the dreamy-rock of, 'Anthems For A seventeen Year Old Girl' by Broken Social Scene. Of course Broken Social Scene were asked to write the songs for movie-band Crash And The Boys, that couldn't be more different from their usual stuff...
Elsewhere here we have the chilled Rock of, 'Sleazy Bed Track' by The Bluetones, then female-led College-Rock with Blood Red Shoes's song, 'It's Getting Boring By The Sea', and then Metric with, 'Black Sheep', which is in the movie performed by movie-band, Clash At Demonhead. Then Beck gives us, 'Ramona'. Of course there are four songs by the main movie band Sex Bob-Omb, from opener, 'We Are Sex Bob-Omb' that sets the Fuzzy guitars a light, then the slightly Stoner-Rock of 'Garbage Truck', the more catchy, 'Threshold' and the Happy-Clap of, 'Summertime' – all four songs written by Beck. The album finishes with strange vocal-less Dance-version of 'Threshold' that sounds like an Amstrad computer game loading having pressed 'Play on tape' and waited for eight-minutes...Hmmm.
Whilst some songs seem thrown together, there is an underlined theme here, and whether or not it is down to Mr Wright's own self-indulgence, it works. If I'm honest there are no real stand out tracks, and therefore a soundtrack that should be played all the way through, as there are not too many weak songs either. If you've seen the film, or are planning on seeing it then this will enhance your movie-watching pleasure, however if the movie is of little or no interest then I suspect that will be the conclusion as to whether or not you should buy this. A decent effort.