Reviews

The Assassination Of Jesse James Ost – Nick Cave And Warren Ellis

Label: Mute

It is rare that we consider it necessary to talk of the pedigree of the artist we review, seeing as so few are in possession of it in any true weighty sense. Yet it was only yesterday that we spoke of PJ Harvey’s and so soon after it becomes a necessity that we reference it once more. And in the modern age perhaps nobody has it like Nick Cave, and indeed those he surrounds himself with. He and The Bad Seeds have over 20 years of ball-breaking, balladry and bad medicine; poetic, rhythmic and melodic alchemy, to their name. Every time they so much as glance at a musical instrument, or in Nick Cave’s case exhale, a black sonnet is hatched somewhere in the ether. They are fairly untouchable in that sense, and so it figures that their side projects will be too. And only months after Grinderman saw Cave learn rudimentary, cathartic guitar and project snarling punk shrapnel at anyone within gobbing distance, an even lesser selection of Bad Seeds – namely he and fiddle virtuoso Warren Ellis – unfurl their second film soundtrack in as many years, containing on it some of their most desperately sumptuous and affecting work.

Unlike lat year’s soundtrack for ‘The Proposition’ (for which Cave also wrote the screenplay), this is entirely instrumental, the repercussions of which are for majestic detail, devastatingly effective slight of hand and a masterfully inferred sense of character and emotion. We haven’t seen the movie in question and yet we don’t feel at all disadvantaged by that. It may be instrumental, but it’s a far distance from incidental.

Warren Ellis plays his violin with the same studied intensity as a character actor who can carry a scene with the depth of their expressions alone. This is wonderfully apparent on ‘Rather Lovely Thing’, strings creaking in response to the weight of drama in the air that surrounds them, the ascending hypnosis of ‘Falling’ and a presumed nod to ‘Midnight Cowboy’ with ‘Cowgirl’. As with any musical master, simply playing the note is only the beginning of the experience. The compositions as wholes are lavished with maudlin atmospheres, thick like fog, elegant, refined piano, rich instrumentation, all formerly played. Lyrics, and the delivery thereof, were always what we considered to be Cave’s strength. That we don’t miss them at all must speak volumes for the quality of this work.

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Release: Nick Cave And Warren Ellis - The Assassination Of Jesse James Ost
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Released: 11 December 2007