Pitchfork

Indie-yuppie will eat your brains. Natalie Portman: "I was proved fucking right!" Stubbs the Zombie, the videogame, is a third-person cerebellum-gobbler starring Edward "Stubbs" Stubblefield, a long-slain traveling salesman hungry for revenge (and brains). Stubbs' tongue-cheeked horrorshow comes re-alive in a newsreel-grainy 1959 "city of the future" called Punchbowl. Stubbs the Zombie, the soundtrack, reanimates innocent late-1950s and early-'60s pop classics with present-day noises from still-breathing Pitchfork review victims.

While video game music has grown increasingly vital-- spawning remixes, orchestral concert tours, and cover bands-- video game soundtrack albums have often stayed as stitched-together as the living dead. Discs might include instrumental suites (Stubbs progenitor Halo), "inspired-by" prog-metal (Halo 2), or vast assortments of licensed songs (Grand Theft Auto). While Stubbs isn't the first game soundtrack consisting of original pop/rock recordings-- earlier this year, Tony Hawk's American Wasteland challenged West Coast skate-punkers to exhume (and then attempt to cover) their punk forefathers-- it pairs a witty concept with mostly decent-or-better execution.

Undeath becomes the unfunny recordings best-- at least outside of a game setting. The Walkmen imbue the Drifters' "There Goes My Baby" with their now-familiar windswept chill, restrained elegance echoing into raw anguish. Sock-hop pianos still kachink around the edges, but singer Hamilton Leithauser's soused rasp reaps greater pathos by omitting the dated "whoa-oh-ohs" of the heartbreaking original. Similarly, Death Cab for Cutie loses itself in the slow-dance sumptuousness of oft-covered "Earth Angel", Ben Gibbard's schoolboy tenor expressing the song's simple sentiment of affection better than it did the more death-obsessed material on Plans. Perennially overlooked, perennially Shins-compared Rogue Wave refashions Buddy Holly's "Everyday" with sad, subtle acoustic guitars invoking said comparisons-- better than the James Taylor version, even!

Still, Stubbs's Punchbowl is a darkly ironic place ("Drink your fill of the future"). A number of songs nail the kitsch level appropriate given the game's gory, "retro-futuristic" setting. Chief among: Cake's understated "Strangers in the Night", with shameless schmaltzing, trumpet flourishes and a canned-sounding rhythm section. Flaming Lips could have recorded this delightful, surprisingly faithful "If I Only Had a Brain" in their sleep; from the sound of this rendition's cinematic flourishes, weird lucid-dream honks and munchkin giggles, maybe they did. Stubbs's context makes the tune sinister despite Wayne Coyne's ignorant/blissful scarecrowing. Oranger has fun, too, with a crunchier version of "Mr. Sandman", bum-bum-bums included. The Raveonettes also did their sexed-up "My Boyfriend's Back" for this year's Pretty in Black, which weakens the soundtrack's claims about all-original content while strengthening its lineup. Too bad about the Dandy Warhols' nose-pinched underwater "All I Have to Do Is Dream", though.

Hey, Punchbowl ain't perfect (dude's snarfing brainstem, remember?) and neither is this soundtrack. Rose Hill Drive's Hendrixed-up, chops-flashing corpse-dragging of Johnny Kidd and the Pirates' Who-popularized "Shakin' All Over" is probably the worst offender. Phantom Planet offers up the album's lone new composition, "The Living Dead", and it's a sludgy, sneering rocker that sounds like it was commissioned for a video game soundtrack. OK one-liners, though: "Here's some advice: Don't lose your head." Plus on "Lollipop" you get to hear Ben Kweller do the ooh-lolly-lolly cheek-pop. Almost a reason to live. Again.