Receive Weekly Email and Text Message Updates:
Sign up for latest info on concerts, dining, promotions and more!
Go!

Most Popular

Reader's Picks

Top Recommendations

A short list of San Francisco's most popular hot spots.
user content provided by: LikeMe.net & SF Weekly

National Features >

  • City Pages

    Michele Bachmann, Unmuzzled

    You don't need to read Sarah Palin's book to hear the ravings of a mad woman.

    By Matt Snyders

  • Miami New Times

    Pimp Daddy

    The rise and fall of a chubby sex-cult leader.

    By Natalie O'Neill

  • Riverfront Times

    Babe 'n' Arms

    Tom was a hot-tempered cross-dresser with a garage full of guns--and then he became Rachel.

    By Nicholas Phillips

  • Dallas Observer

    The Fight for Texas

    Rick Perry and Kay Bailey Hutchison are locked in a battle over the soul of the GOP. They're also running for governor.

    By Sam Merten

Various Artists

Stubbs the Zombie: The Soundtrack

Share

  • rss

By Maya Kroth

Published on October 19, 2005

I haven't played video games since, like, 1984, when it was all about freeway-hopping frogs and the Atari 2600, not Angelina Jolie in hot pants and deadbeat boyfriends fondling their joysticks. Back then, video games didn't have "soundtracks," unless you count Donkey Kong's Casio keyboard bloops. But today's spoiled brats' games have it all: surround sound, 3-D animation, and, now, the Walkmen and the Dandy Warhols. Stubbs, the game, is set in 1959 and has something to do with a zombie terrorizing the suburbs, so the soundtrack takes classic '50s tunes and lets indie rockers brilliantly reimagine them. The result: "My Boyfriend's Back" goes electroclash with the Raveonettes, Wayne Coyne channels the Scarecrow for "If I Only Had a Brain," and Ben Kweller sings such a sweet "Lollipop" it makes me want to go Stepford. There are even a few S.F. bands tossed into the mix, such as Oranger and Rogue Wave, which turns in a tidily arranged version of Buddy Holly's "Everyday." Manly men might be bummed at the relative lack of dude-rock -- except Rose Hill Drive's "Shakin' All Over" -- but their girlfriends will dig the wuss-pop, especially Death Cab's Ben Gibbard earnestly crooning "Earth Angel" as if the life of Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future depended on it. Genius.