British comedian/actor/seasoned TV presenter Russell Brand first introduced audiences to waifish, blown-out retro-rocker Aldous Snow in the 2008 comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Brand’s heroin-chic, hedonistic yet good-natured Lothario felt like an amalgamation of
Mick Jagger, Johnny Rotten,
David Bowie,
Robert Plant, and Axl Rose, and the character proved popular enough with moviegoers to spawn a sequel of sorts, only this time around, it’s Snow’s turn in the spotlight. 2010’s Get Him to the Greek reunited Brand with Marshall director Nicholas Stoller and producer Judd Apatow, and Snow’s band,
Infant Sorrow (named after a poem by William Blake), provided the film’s soundtrack. Part
Spinal Tap, part
Tenacious D and a whole lot of
Buckcherry and the
Darkness,
Infant Sorrow’s 15-track “debut” sounds like something fellow fictional rock star Billy Mack (played by Bill Nighy in the 2003 film Love Actually) would have put out in his Dionysian heydays. With track titles like “The Clap,” “African Child (Trapped in Me),” “Bangers, Beans & Mash,” “Riding Daphne,” and “Furry Walls,” it’s easy to write the whole affair off as pure novelty. While that’s a fairly apt summation of the final product, the songs, which were penned by Brand,
Jarvis Cocker (
Pulp),
Carl Barat (
Libertines), singer/songwriter
Dan Bern, and actor/musician Jason Segal, the latter of whom provided Sarah Marshall with the brilliant Dracula puppet rock opera, A Taste of Love, are immaculately stupid/clever, paying homage to the hard rock greats (and their myriad sexual deviances) while providing enough hooks to land Moby Dick, as well as his less famous father, Papa Boner. ~ James Christopher Monger