I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: SONIC YOUTH-SYR 3: Invito Al Ĉielo (1998).

This SYR release adds Jim O’Rourke to the mix (O’Rourke played with with them on A Thousand Leaves too).  I’ve always been aware of O’Rourke but I’ve never really listened to any of the bands that he’s been associated with (and there’s a lot).  So, I’m not sure what his actual contributions are, but he seems to be pushing the SY members into a much more noisy/abstract direction.  (A few samples of Gastr Del Sol shows them to be pretty out there, so perhaps pushing SY in a direction that was not too far from where they’d go on their own.  And, I rather liked the Gastr stuff, too).

The EP is nearly an hour with 2 songs over 20 minutes long.  And, the most fascinating parts come from the most unexpected places: Kim plays trupmet!  There’s keybaords!  And all of the text is in Esperanto.

This disc doesn’t diverge too much from the first two…it’s noisy and discordant and full of lots of experimentation.  There’s some good stuff on here, but there’s also a lot of it.

[READ August 9, 2009] Scott Pilgrim & The Infinite Sadness

Things get pretty intense in Vol 3 of this series.  We get an in-depth look ant Envy Adams, Scott’s first girlfriend and lead singer of The Clash at Demonhead.  TCaD have asked Scott’s band Sex Bob-omb to open for them, but there are clearly underlying reasons behind this.

One of them is that another of Ramona’s evil ex-boyfriends is the bassist in the band.  And, another more narratively interesting reason is to give a peek into Scott’s past.  We learn that Envy was a rather shy young girl, until she slowly grew out of her shell (and changed her name to Envy), and then became the extroverted lead singer.

Todd Ingram, the evil-ex is a vegan.  He gets all of his power from veganism.  There’s an odd undercurrent of vegetraianism throughout the series.  At one point Ramona says she’s a vegetarian but Scott points out she just ate a chicken sandwich.  There’s the recipe for vegan Shepherd’s Pie in the previous volume.  But then there’s this evil vegan subplot in volume 3.  (Todd convinces his bandmates that gelato is vegan, which it isn’t).  So, actually, he’s a fake vegan, so maybe the evilness stems from fakeness.

But Todd was not always fake vegan. He graduated with honors from Vegan Academy, and once used his vegan superpowers to impress Ramona by smashing a hole in the moon. (yup, you read that right).

Anyhow.

Scott and Todd are destined to fight in Honest Ed’s a discount emporium and Toronto landmark.  This fight is a cataclysmic and exciting event.  But the duel is not over.  And, in the exciting finish, all manner of exciting forces come together to assist Scott in his quest for his beloved Ramona.  (There’s even a reprise visit from Crash and the Boys).

The pace of the series is not too different, there’s still some downtime, and heck, Scott is prtty lazy, so it’s not like the whole book is action packed.  And that’s what makes the action so good.  We get a lot more backstory into the charcaters, which fleshes out these well-developed young adults even more.

If you’re not hooked to the series by now, Vol 3 is not going to change your mind.  But honestly, why wouldn’t you be hooked?  It’s funny, it’s clever and it’s set in Toronto.

Scott Pilgrim rules!