- Audio CD (4 Jan 2010)
- Number of Discs: 1
- Format: Soundtrack
- Label: Mute
- ASIN: B002WFHSQ0
- Other Editions: Audio CD | MP3 Download
- Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 44,904 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
Amazon.co.uk allows you to pay for your items in your local currency. Restrictions apply. Learn More. |
Product details |
Track Listings
| 1. Home |
| 2. The Road |
| 3. Storytime |
| 4. The Cannibals |
| 5. Water And Ash |
| 6. The Mother |
| 7. The Real Thing |
| 8. Memory |
| 9. The House |
| 10. The Far Road |
| 11. The Church |
| 12. The Journey |
| 13. The Cellar |
| 14. The Bath |
| 15. The Family |
| 16. The Beach |
| 17. The Boy |
Product Description
Review
Outside of their work together preaching a dark gospel in the Bad Seeds and Grinderman, Nick Cave and Warren Ellis have turned a hand to a different, if not altogether unrelated musical calling – the film score. Soundtracks for 2006’s outlaw flick The Proposition and 2007’s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford have suggested the pair have some skill for transmuting the orchestral grandeur of their full-band projects into something that can colour around an unfolding narrative.
Scoring the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2006 novel The Road would seem like an easy fit. A post-apocalyptic tale of a man and his son struggling across a ruined landscape in search of a salvation that may or may not exist, it’s shot through with themes that are pretty much Cave’s bread and butter: violence, hardship, the prospect of a vengeful or uncaring God, and a plea for deliverance.
Yet The Road is not exactly what you expect. McCarthy’s book is compelling, a page-turner, but heavy on gloom and punishing to the last. Cave and Ellis’ score, though, seems fixated on those thin shafts of sunlight – as Cave explains it, “light, haunting, simple… with a sense of absence and loss at its heart”. And it’s true, much here has more the feel of a requiem than a death march. The Road and Storytime are calm and elegiac, tender piano augmented by Ellis’ softly mournful violin. Memory is softer still, incandescent drones redolent of Stars of The Lid.
There is, of course, tension here too – music for fear, and pursuit. Cannibals matches squalling, Stravinsky-like violins with the thud of heavy drums. The House, meanwhile, is genuinely chilling, building from an uncertain opening of shivering violin and low piano notes into a hectic soundtrack to pursuit, all screaming guitars and savage, lurching beats. As a collection, though, The Road balances light and shade with some skill.
Given the subject matter, it could have been bleak, monochromatic even – but here, in the hands of Cave and Ellis, hope springs eternal. --Louis Pattison
Find more music at the BBC This link will take you off Amazon in a new window
CD Description
The Road composed by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, is the soundtrack to a new movie directed by John Hillcoat. The big screen adaptation of the bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy (author of No Country For Old Men) sees Academy Award-nominee Viggo Mortensen leading an all-star cast featuring Charlize Theron, Robert Duvall, Guy Pearce and young newcomer Kodi Smit-McPhee.
An epic, post-apocalyptic tale of survival of a father and his young son journeying across a barren America destroyed by a mysterious cataclysm, The Road boldly imagines a future in which men are pushed to the worst and the best that they are capable of--a future in which a father and his son are sustained by love.
Nick Cave and Warren Ellis have created an evocative score featuring violin and piano with beautiful fleeting melodies and eerie sound loops filled with terror and suspense.
"The movie is about the loss of things, the absence of things, the lack of things. The lack of the wife/mother is present in every frame of the film. The delicate edifice of the film holds the ache of her absence, tenderly and by the tips of the fingers," explains Cave. "The music was composed as a direct response to the film. A light, haunting, simple score with a sense of absence and loss at its heart."
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Nick Cave (The Birthday Party, The Bad Seeds & Grinderman) has constantly strayed outside the accepted boundaries of what a rock singer is, or should be capable of - usually this would induce mistrust and disdain but Cave's appearing lack of compromise, yet willingness to understand the mediums in which he has chosen to create, has instead drawn critical acclaim from both the literary and film world.
The Road, co-composed by Warren Ellis (The Dirty Three, The Bad Seeds & Grinderman) is Cave's (I think) fifth soundtrack and third collaboration with Ellis, is haunting, bleak, elegaic and beautiful. Strongly rooted in classicism and based predominantly around piano and strings, the arrangements of which conjures up images of music played within the home, tenative, childlike and passed down, is shockingly brutalised with bursts of violent dissonance and menacing electronica. Only on `The Bath' do we hear the human voice, an eerie, almost lunar drone offering sparse comfort. The score is undoubtedly uneasy and demands repeated listens before revealing it's true power. One of the best contemporary scores I've heard in a long while.
The Road, co-composed by Warren Ellis (The Dirty Three, The Bad Seeds & Grinderman) is Cave's (I think) fifth soundtrack and third collaboration with Ellis, is haunting, bleak, elegaic and beautiful. Strongly rooted in classicism and based predominantly around piano and strings, the arrangements of which conjures up images of music played within the home, tenative, childlike and passed down, is shockingly brutalised with bursts of violent dissonance and menacing electronica. Only on `The Bath' do we hear the human voice, an eerie, almost lunar drone offering sparse comfort. The score is undoubtedly uneasy and demands repeated listens before revealing it's true power. One of the best contemporary scores I've heard in a long while.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
I have never heard Nick Cave's music before, but I'm seriously tempted to buy other CDs now. I thought the music, which is the soundtrack for the film The Road, was absolutely wonderful, both as a soundtrack, and also to listen to in its own right. It's haunting, tuneful, atmospheric and just beautiful.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Having read the Road a few months ago in anticipation of the movie, I was pleased to discover that Nick Cave and Warren Ellis had recorded the soundtrack. I greatly enjoyed the book, and the music absolutely complements it. The music is all instrumental with piano and cello mainly featuring. It's pretty grim, but in a good way. The title track is fairly typical of the album. Percussion is almost entirely absent, and a lone piano leads in to a wasteland-evoking string section. Much of the soundtrack is in this vein, though it is punctuated with some harsher tracks (The Cellar is a prime example) which are a little hard to listen to, and disturb the mood a little.
The better tracks feature the least percussion (Storytime, The Real Thing, Memory) and are quite simply mood pieces. And what a mood it is. It is the sound of a wintry landscape: beautiful, if a bit forbidding.
I also thoroughly recommend their compilation of soundtrack works - White Lunar, which features music from their soundtrack work for The Proposition and the Assassination of Jesse James, along with some obscure documentary work.
The better tracks feature the least percussion (Storytime, The Real Thing, Memory) and are quite simply mood pieces. And what a mood it is. It is the sound of a wintry landscape: beautiful, if a bit forbidding.
I also thoroughly recommend their compilation of soundtrack works - White Lunar, which features music from their soundtrack work for The Proposition and the Assassination of Jesse James, along with some obscure documentary work.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Moody...
Dark and moody...just how I like it. Nothing fast on here, just relaxing, thought provoking stuff. It does seem to be over a little quick, as the tracks are very short... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Mr Ledger
Leave Arvo Part alone
The shameless pilfering of Arvo Part"s music for indie rock stars own commercial gain has got to stop
Published on 27 Mar 2010 by Leonardo Clausi
Outstanding
Very good soundtrack, worth buying if you are a Nick Cave / Warren Ellis fan
Published on 16 Feb 2010 by J. Podger
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
