ake the soundtracks for Back to the Future and Night of the Living Dead, season them with Death of a Salesman and the result might sound like Stubbs the Zombie—Rebel Without a Pulse. It's not within the scope of this column to review the game itself, but in the words of a fan on Amazon.com, "Who hasn't fantasized about walking around a pseudo-futuristic 1950's metropolis as an undead traveling salesman from the '30s? I know I have." 'Nuff said!
The soundtrack CD takes a bunch of oldies and parcels them out to various contemporary bands. The results are somewhat mixed but overall pretty decent. Some of the acts play it more or less straight, while others try to ring some changes on the tunes. The disc opens with two straightforward covers. The first is a nice rendering of "Lollipop" by Ben Kweller, who performs this silly old up-tempo love song without a shred of irony or archness, unlike some of the other bands assembled here. The harmonies are nice and tight, the acoustic guitar is perfect, and the production is dry as dust except for the "pops." Great! Next up, the Ravonettes do "My Boyfriend's Back" essentially straight, although the great over-the-top drumming of the original is replaced here by a dully thumping '80s drum patch. Still, the vocals make up for it. This is, by the way, the only song that is available elsewhere than on this CD; the Raveonettes have included it on their latest album and have also been trotting it out at—excuse the expression—"live" dates.
Next up is the Penguins' "Earth Angel," tackled by Death Cab for Cutie, who are a bit sloppy with it but nevertheless manage to retain the tune's wistfulness. Following this is Rose Hill Drive doing "Shakin' All Over," with obvious nods to the Who's version on the Live at Leeds album—they even stutter out the first line of the second verse a la "My Generation." This tune isn't '50s, but it showcases some of the best guitar playing on the album except for Oranger's "Mr. Sandman," which is one of the real prizewinners here (see below).
Tunes to tickle you to death
Next up, Cake takes a whack at "Strangers in the Night," tongue firmly in cheek. The trumpets are to die for. This is probably the funniest song on the disc, but it's also fresh and has a whacked-out mellow groove.
Not that there aren't a few misfires on the CD. The Walkmen's "There Goes My Baby" doesn't really do justice to the Drifters' original; their performance is basically phoned in. The Dandy Warhols throw way too much processing on the vocals of "All I Have to Do Is Dream." They seem to think it's funny. It isn't. And the Flaming Lips do a drugged-out "If I Only Had a Brain," which would probably have been better if they hadn't done it straight, even to mimicking the Scarecrow's voice. It's about as un-Lips-like as it could possibly be. (Well, except for all the Munchkins.)
The two big catches here are Rogue Wave's take on the old Buddy Holly hit "Every Day," which is absolutely amazing—it's sweet and moving and shows a lot of respect for the original while not settling for being a mere remake. Worth the price of admission, along with "Mr. Sandman," mentioned above—Oranger simply tears the guts out of this song and makes it work. It builds up beautifully from a perfectly straight beginning into a crazed guitar rave at the end, with carefully rendered background vocals throughout. Great! Clem Snide's "Tears on My Pillow" is quite a bit faster than the original and simply swings like the song never did before. Milton Mapes grabs hold of Ricky Nelson's "Lonesome Town" and turns in a gorgeous performance with an excellent guitar solo and a coda that sounds as if was played on an old Emenee Chord Organ.
The disc closes out with the one original song of the set, "The Living Dead" by Phantom Planet. A contemporary tune, it still manages to sound rather like something from the '60s. Not half bad.
If you loves them oldies, you could do a lot worse that to snag this disc to—heh—bone up on some of the newer bands on the scene. I probably liked the Clem Snide tune best, but there are a lot of other good moments. My one complaint about the music is that I'd like to have heard about twice as much of it; total time here is short, and my attention span for this stuff is long.
— Al
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