We’re just under six months away from the release of Edgar Wright’s hotly anticipated comic adaptation “Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World,” and the wait becomes less and less bearable as time goes on. Fortunately, the end of February has brought something to stave off the pangs, with a first listen to a song from the soundtrack.
As you may know by now, the film is set around the indie music scene in Toronto, with most of the principal characters playing in bands, and Wright, along with Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, has been curating a pretty spectacular line-up of bands, either to write the music for the in-movie bands, or just to appear on the soundtrack. Beck will be writing music for Sex Bob-omb (the band that Scott plays in), Broken Social Scene are contributing songs for the noise-rock band Crash & The Boys and Japanese future-pop star Cornelius will provide a track for the Kutunagi Twins, two of the evil exes that Scott is forced to fight, while Dan the Automator is also confirmed to be part of the soundtrack.
The first band to be locked in, however, were Canadian band Metric, who are contributing the music for The Clash at Demonhead, 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 band were always a great pick to sub in for Envy’s band (they’re more or less dead ringers for the band on the page), and over the weekend, they’ve revealed their contribution to the film, which was revealed last year to be the song “Black Sheep.” The track was in the running to be included on the band’s excellent, career-best recent album Fantasies, but when Wright approached them about using the song, they decided to save it.
A live version had been doing the rounds for a while, but the band today released a stream of the final version on their Facebook page (as highlighted by director Edgar Wright), and it’s pretty great — maybe not quite up there with “Help, I’m Alive” or “Sick Muse” off the last record, but totally perfect for The Clash at Demonhead. Sources close to the production tell us that, while the song had been demoed before, this version was recorded specifically for the film, featuring a new intro. You have to become a fan of the band on Facebook to hear the track, but it’s well worth it.
We’re also informed that there’s a few more key contributors to the soundtrack yet to be realized, so hopefully there’ll be a few more announcements down the road. “Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World” hits U.K. theaters on August 6th, and the U.S. a week later on August 13, but with Comic-Con only a month before the release, we’re sure there’ll be a heavy presence (and possibly even the finished film) at the annual geek festival.