Album review: 'Scott Pilgrim vs. the World' soundtrack
2 stars (out of 4)
The comic book-as-movie “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” attracted a high-profile cast for its soundtrack (ABKCO): Beck, Metric, the Black Lips, Beachwood Sparks and Broken Social Scene contribute songs. That’s enticing bait for the Pitchfork generation, but like the similarly star-studded (but bland) “Twilight” and (insufferably twee) “Juno” soundtracks, “Scott Pilgrim” is something less than the sum of its parts.
Beck says he wrote the songs for fictional punk band Sex Bob-omb in a matter of days, and they sound like it, though his contributions do include the comically plaintive ode “Garbage Truck,” sung from the perspective of a lovesick sanitation engineer. Broken Social Scene’s fragments for another make-believe group, Crash and the Boys, are essentially jokes that need to be heard only once. Besides a handful of ringers (vintage tracks from Frank Black, T Rex and the Rolling Stones), only Metric adds a song to the mix (the richly atmospheric stomper “Black Sheep”) that sounds like something more than a toss-off.
The comic book-as-movie “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” attracted a high-profile cast for its soundtrack (ABKCO): Beck, Metric, the Black Lips, Beachwood Sparks and Broken Social Scene contribute songs. That’s enticing bait for the Pitchfork generation, but like the similarly star-studded (but bland) “Twilight” and (insufferably twee) “Juno” soundtracks, “Scott Pilgrim” is something less than the sum of its parts.
Beck says he wrote the songs for fictional punk band Sex Bob-omb in a matter of days, and they sound like it, though his contributions do include the comically plaintive ode “Garbage Truck,” sung from the perspective of a lovesick sanitation engineer. Broken Social Scene’s fragments for another make-believe group, Crash and the Boys, are essentially jokes that need to be heard only once. Besides a handful of ringers (vintage tracks from Frank Black, T Rex and the Rolling Stones), only Metric adds a song to the mix (the richly atmospheric stomper “Black Sheep”) that sounds like something more than a toss-off.
--Greg Kot
greg@gregkot