Nick Cave and Warren Ellis Score on The Road
The Road soundtrack takes you on one hell of a ride with Cave and Ellis at the wheel.
Nick Cave & Warren Ellis
The Road Soundtrack
Released on Nov 23, 2009
For those unfamiliar with the plot of Cormac McCarthy's The Road,
the story follow a Man and his son through the desolate landscape of
the United States. The world's population, man, plant, and animal, has
been completely decimated by a cataclysmic event and only a few groups
of humans remain. And of course, it's ugly. The USA has turned Mad Max
on itself and many tribes of men have turned violent and even cannabilistic.
The Man and his Boy travel south to the ocean, dodging baby-eating strangers
and wayfarers, to try and find the "good people." Obviously, The Road is going to be a National Lampoon comedy with tits and
gags. This is a dark, depressing film that needs a score to properly
convey the intricacies that McCarthy includes in all his novels and
is sure to be portrayed in the adaptations of them.
And who better to do this than Nick Cave and Warren
Ellis? Cave
and Ellis has previously worked on two scores together for The
Proposition and The Assassination of Jesse James. The
director of The Road John Hillcoat previously directed The
Proposition and decided to use Cave and Ellis again to score his
new film. Though Cave and Ellis are very successful at the music
projects they have both collaborated on in the past, creating a score
for a film is an entirely other beast. A score for a film can
make or break a scene. It’s music that reflects a mood or can
create a mood. If done improper, it can take an audience member
entirely out of a film. The human eye is lazy compared to the
human ear. A bad soundtrack is more annoying than bad acting.
Though The Road is a different beast from their past two scores,
Cave and Ellis tackled it with the same zeal they had before.
Each track name of the score
is simply titled (“Home,” “The Church,” “The Mother”) but
is anything but simple. Throughout listening to The Road score you can sense a definite story even if you have no previous knowledge
of it. In “Home” and “The Road,” the two opening tracks,
Cave and Ellis establish the main theme that would represent the Man
and the Boy in the story that is their score. The piano coupled with
the violin gives a sense of comfort and home in the barren landscape
of the US. In a world of desolation, they are the warmth that
gives them hope. You hear the father and son’s sadness in songs
like “The Memory” and their hope in “The Far Road,” but it’s
hearing the cause of their fear that is the most striking. In
“The Cannibals” the smooth and steady violins become skittish and
distorted, succumbing to the driving and threatening drums and caustic
sounds behind them. The biggest blast comes in “The Church,”
which is an odd title for a song that sounds like the scariest thing
possible is happening to the Man and the Boy.
I’ve never read McCarthy’s The Road and have been eagerly anticipating the long overdue release
of the adaptation, so I have no frame of reference as to what these
songs might be about. However Cave and Ellis do a fine job of
creating a story within the score that it doesn’t matter. It
has the same ups and downs any written or visual plot could, building
suspense, hope, and a connection. All through music. Though
a good score is suppose to do this, sometimes I feel the only thing
that makes a score have a story is knowing the story itself. Cave
and Ellis have transferred over their songwriting and composing skills
from the Bad Seeds and Grinderman and used it to breathe audible life
to McCarthy’s words. Putting aside Johnny Greenwood’s equally
amazing score for There Will Be Blood, the soundtrack for The Road has to be one of the best accompaniments to a written story
in the last ten years. I say let more musicians with a rock background
make film scores because their doing a damn fine job at it.
High Point
It’s hard to imagine a better set of musicians to reflect the messed up mind of McCarthy. Thank you Cave and Ellis, and your amazing facial hair.
Low Point
Since it is reflecting a struggle within a post-apocalyptic world, this isn’t the most cheery score composed. Not that this is a bad thing, but it’s something to take into consideration when choosing your morning commute soundtrack.
Posted by Amy Dittmeier on Nov 24, 2009 @ 6:30 am
