Scott Pilgrim: The Game, Inception, The Tiger Lillies, Joan Jett, and The Go-Gos

7:25 PM on 09.03.2010 (server time)0

While everyone is off PAXin' a few of us are still here and still pumpin' out reviews for the rest of the non-PAXers out there.

This week is a wonderfully weird little mash up. We've got two soundtracks, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game and Inception as well as some cabaret with The Tiger Lillies and two often forgotten 80s classics from Joan Jett and The Go-Go's.

Album: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game (Original Videogame Soundtrack)
Artist: Anamanaguchi
Label: ABKCO (US)
Released: August 24, 2010
Genre: Soundtracks
*Sub-genres 8-Bit Rock, Chiptunes
Sounds like: An NES had Sex with a rock band.

Anamanaguchi just burst out of the shadows it seemed this summer with the release of their free singles over on their own site (Here) And they worked their way into my brain hard. When I Saw that they were doing the Music for the Scott Pilgrim Game I was all freaking out and broke down and bought it without buying the game (Yet, that totally did happen after though) And I�m not disappointed at all. I�m throughly impressed with how much music there is in this fairly cheap album. 24 Songs all about 2 minutes long. And each has it�s own feel too which is hard to pull off. They all have the signature Anamanaguchi touch which comes from the blending of NES sounds with Guitar, Bass, and Drums so fluidly.

This album has the potential to help break down the barriers between Chiptunes and other Music, at least as far as the listener bases are concerned. So if you thought you couldn�t get into chiptunes, listen to Anamanaguchi and that�ll help make a fan out of you. You need not worry about being alienated by the �hipster-ness� that some say pervades the Scott Pilgrim Franchise, since you could throughly enjoy this without ever touching any other piece of the puzzle, but I bet you�ll want to after this sampling. So if you enjoy rock music, chiptune music, or anything in between, check out this album and be ready for Another Winter.

Personal favorite tracks: (Do I have to, all the songs are great?) Another Winter, Subruban Tram, The Dark One, Twin Dragons, Gideon Wraths Part 1, and Gideon Wraths Part 2

TL;DR: Like Rock Music? GOOD Rock Music? This is for you Like Video Games? Retro Video Games? How about their music? This is For you as well. 8 Bit sounds and Solid Rock Aesthetics make this a can�t miss Album

-Antwhan

Album: Beauty and the Beat
Artist: The Go-Gos
Label: I.R.S.
Released: July 24, 1981
Genre: Pop
*Sub-genres Pop rock, new wave
Sounds like: Rock dipped in 80s sass and filled with badass.

How do I introduce this review? Wow. So many possibilities. How about how depressingly underrated it is? Maybe how refreshing it is to see an album with sass and badassery that doesn�t devolve into sex drive? The Go-Go�s were always something of an enigma in that respect. Outside of some of their mainstream hits (We Got the Beat, Our Lips Are Sealed, Vacation) they always managed to carry a very definitive amount of attitude in their songs but the band itself never really did the whole �We�re jailbait, look at us,� thing that The Runaways and The Bangles did. In some ways I guess that�s what destined their albums in their entirety to be pushed into obscurity. All the same their debut album, Beauty and the Beat continues to be one of the finest pop rock albums ever cut.

The first track, Our Lips Are Sealed, is the mainstream pop hit you�ve all heard a million times and that�s all well and good. But the real meat of the album lies in the following tracks. How Much More and Tonite really do well to mix it up and give off a different aura. The album gets a little darker, a little more discontent, and that�s where the group really shines. From then on out the album is just fucking brilliant. Lust to Love and Automatic, two of the darkest and sexiest tracks on the album, are some of my favorite pop rock tracks ever.

The composition is your basic rock set up, harmonies included, but the sound is interesting. On the happier tracks you get the gist of it really. Spry mainstream guitar with some really interesting bass and your standard drums. However the remaining tracks that aren�t so spry and are really wonderfully composed. Some incredible drumlines, more �serious� guitar, and some great vocal performances from Belinda Carlisle make every track an absolute pleasure. It�s just so fucking infectious. It�s incredible. Or maybe I�m just throwing that in because This Town just started playing and is blowing my friggin� mind.

Lyrically the album as a whole is acceptable though not mind blowing. However I do have to call out one track in particular. Automatic, which is absolutely beautiful in lyrical content and in presentation. It is without a doubt one of my favorite tracks of all time for that exact reason. I mean look at this�

Golden hair
Skin glisten
Beating heart but don't listen

Angles sharp
Crash together
Time and consciousness sever

Mind in automatic
Time stop
Automatic

Those words, coupled with their delivery, fucking get me every time.

Beauty and the Beat is an incredible album of the 80s. It�s a hodgepodge of the happy-go-lucky themes that infected the radio pleasantly placed alongside some of the darker tones that came out of that era. Now it�s not The Cramps or the Dead Kennedys but there�s certainly a deep layer lying under these deceitfully simplistic tracks from The Go-Gos. Do not take their #1 singles directly at face value. You�ll be surprised what this album throws at you.

Personal favorite tracks: Automatic, This Town, and Lust to Love

TL;DR: A wonderfully underrated album with a deceitful dark side.

-Xzyliac

Album: The Mountains of Madness Soundtrack
Artist: The Tiger Lillies
Label: Misery Guts Music
Released: 2006
Genre: Punk Cabaret
Sub-genres Gypsy Punk, Brechtian music
Sounds like: Hell�s Lounge Band

The Tiger Lillies are not particularly pleasant. They make music that most people find aggravating and uncomfortable. Beastiality, prostitution, sin, and degradation have all been common themes in their work. The lead singer, Martin Jacques, is known for his screeching falsetto voice and thick grease painted visage. They are traditionally a three piece outfit with an upright bass, toy drum kit and accordion but use everything from a musical saw to a theremin. Harmony is not part of their gig. However, they make it work. They gained critical acclaim (and even won a Grammy) for doing an album based upon the works of famed macabre artist Edward Gorey. A stage play of their album based upon everyone�s favorite fucked up fairy tale collection Der Struwwelpeter toured across the globe to rave reviews and accolades. What the Tiger Lillies do is take the ugly and the shunned and create beauty without masking any of the grotesqueries.

Mountains of Madness is a stage production based upon a collection of songs The Tiger Lillies wrote inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft. All of Lovecraft�s greatest works get a song here, from Mountains of Madness, The Call of Cthulhu to my personal favorite, Rats in the Walls. German punk icon Alexander Hacke narrates the show with readings from Lovecraft�s works in a gravely, demonic voice. The songs are morose, tinged with a despair and sorrow-filled beauty that is unmistakably Tiger Lillies while doing justice to the intense horror of Lovecraft�s vision. Each song is masterfully crafted to express the dread of the stories. Jacque�s voice, ranging from a shrieking falsetto to a somber, subdued timbre carries with it the weight and power to breathe life into a world of impossible horror and hopelessness. ArtistDanielle de Picciotto created a series of cartoons to accompany the stage show. Each cartoon is an ethereal visual journey, using Bosch-esque imagery and flittering shadowy things to bring the music to life on stage.

I love the Tiger Lillies for making the obscene wondrous and magnificent. Be it the works of Lovecraft or Shock-Headed Peter or love songs to farm animals, they excel at making deviance a joy and corruption an art. For any fan of Lovecraft or a fan of the strange and macabre, Mountains of Madness is well worth your time. Despair is given a voice and nightmares become the joyful norm here.

Personal favorite tracks: The Rats in the Walls, Do You Know, The Mountaintops

TL;DR: Like Lovecraft? Like the strange and macabre? This is for you.

- Occams electric toothbrush

Album: I Love Rock �n� Roll
Artist: Joan Jett & The Blackhearts
Label: Boardwalk/Blackheart
Released: November 18, 1981
Genre: Rock
*Sub-genres Classic rock, punk, rock n� roll
Sounds like: Simple, fun, straightforward, and sexy rock.

This one has been sitting on my mind for a while and while I�ve been churning out long overdue reviews the last few weeks I decided to finally knock this one out. I didn�t really expect to learn much, it�s an album that gets a lot of play from myself every once in a while, but after listening again with a critics ear I�ve actually come away with a lot of new thoughts.

I Love Rock �n� Roll appropriately opens up with its popular title track and for good reason. It set the precedent for the entire album. From covers of rock musicians of old (the title track is itself a cover of The Arrows) to some fantastic original material from the always powerful Joan Jett this album is a celebration of pure unabashed rock. It doesn�t try to be overbearing, heavy, or particularly deep and the opening track is the perfect example of that. From then on the album just continues to impress with tracks like (I�m Gonna) Run Away, Love is Pain, and NAG this album makes first impressions look easy.

The composition and sound of the album follows suit. It�s very simplistic but it never feels old or tired. The power chords stung together into catchy riffs, the pounding drums, the harmonies, all feel very rock. There�s little attempt at flash or a schtick and overall that�s what makes the album so powerful. Tracks like NAG (featuring doo-wop group The Coasters) have classic 50s/60s rock n� roll rhythms and are really the epitome of the album. Meanwhile covers like Louie, Louie and Crimson and Clover are just so fucking great that they might be my favorite versions respectively. Joan has an unmistakable way with her voice on this album.

Lyrically is where a lot of people may be turned off or turned on. For myself I found the lyricism wonderful and refreshing. Let�s just say Joan won�t be winning any poetry awards. There�s next to no attempt at metaphors, imagery, or any other literary devices that often add punch to the lyricism of albums. These lyrics are blatantly straight out of Joan Jett�s bedroom circa 1980. What you see, tracks like You�re Too Possesive, NAG, and Love is Pain are exactly what they sound like. They�re blatantly unpoetic and for that they�re extremely relatable.

Overall I Love Rock �n� Roll is appropriately classic. It is as much an homage to classic rock n� roll as it is a primary example. It�s fun, it�s intelligent, it�s relatable, and it�s fun. The spirit of Joan Jett absolutely shines and it�s that spirit that adds just the right flavor to a wonderful rock n� roll album.

Personal favorite tracks: I Love Rock �n� Roll, Crimson and Clover, and Love is Pain

TL;DR: Classic Joan Jett at her finest. Any fun of pure unabashed rock with a little bit of sexiness should already have this one in their collection.

-Xzyliac

Album: Inception
Artist: Hans Zimmer
Label: Reprise
Released: 2010
Genre: Soundtrack
Sounds like: GOING DEEPER
WARNING: Some spoilers for the actual movie ahead. Skip down to the TL;DR if you want a spoiler free, �buy it or not� version.

There are few things that make me see a movie twice. It can be what little I knew about the movie beforehand (lol J.J. Abrams), or it could be one scene in the movie which makes me want to learn it all by heart (lol Pulp Fiction), or it could be WALL-E. But few times, and I mean, very few times, has the soundtrack of a flick made me go and see the movie again in theaters. The Inception Soundtrack just happens to be one of those soundtracks.

The first thing you have to understand about the soundtrack Hans Zimmer has created is that it�ll first remind you somewhat of The Dark Knight�s soundtrack. Inception is a very low tone scene, nothing terribly high in the overall score, except for the violins (but when are they ever not high?), and even then they are sometimes closer to the ground than in the sky. This helps it fit with the grounded feel of the movie itself, as Inception, despite its main plot device being dreams, doesn�t really stretch the imagination in the way you think it would.

Then comes the main attraction; every track in the Inception soundtrack is based off a theme show off in the opening track. Chord structure, rhythmic placing, even dynamics; everything can be traced to back to the beginning of the entire soundtrack, and in some cases, to� Non, je ne regrette rien� by Edith Piaf, the song that, in the movie, is used to initialize the �kick� sequence to wake dreamers up.

The idea of building an entire soundtrack off a single theme is not new to the movie soundtrack world, but it�s done wonderfully well here. You�ll have a grand old time listening to the soundtrack over and over again, trying to draw links between various parts of songs, wondering if one chord in one track can be heard in any of the other songs. But not only does it make a fun little romp for the Music Theory student; the soundtrack can actually serve as a plot device for the movie itself.

The main thing Inception pushes is the thought of going deeper and deeper into ones dreams, effectively dreaming within a dream�within a dream. Every time you dive deeper into another level of the dreamscape, or fall asleep and begin dreaming while in a dream, time slows down. That�s where the soundtrack comes in. The soundtrack sports a varied tempo that goes from funeral-doom-metal-breakdown speed to somewhat quick all throughout the score. It level of being dramatic can also vary greatly, and these changes can indicate when one drops into/out off a deeper level of dreaming. A dramatic, slower paced section can signal someone achieving a new level in dreaming, while a quicker, lighter section can signal someone waking up. Slower, but also calmer sections of songs can also indicate what level of dreaming you�re on. It�s all these little subtleties that make this a soundtrack you listen to over and over again not just because it�s a good listen, but it can also help you appreciate and in some cases, understand the movie more.

Speaking of good listen, if you�re not into movies and just really like well put together orchestrated pieces, the Inception soundtrack can serve that purpose as well. As I mentioned before, Hans goes from really slow to really fast without skipping a beat, and it can be a gradual build up, or a shocking turnaround. Hans also likes to mess with bass. Anything from the electronic bass, to the brass instrument bass, to the bass drum, he�ll use it, and it�ll be really loud. Everything flows supremely well too, the general excitement level being low to high to low, with �Mombassa� being the high point, since the track takes place during a chase scene in the movie. And the subtle use or guitar licks by Johnny Marr of The Smiths adds a certain modern feel to a soundtrack about a modern take on how we dream.

All in all, if you watched Inception, you�re doing yourself a disservice by not buying this soundtrack. If you haven�t seen Inception, go see it, and then pick up this soundtrack. And if you have no desire what so ever to see Inception (you monster), at give the soundtrack a onceover; this is one soundtrack no fan of soundtracks should miss this year.

Personal favorite tracks: EVERYTHING. Seriously though; Mombassa and Dream Is Collapsing

TL;DR: You like soundtracks? You�ll like this. Buy It.

-Daxelman

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